September 2019 | SMITHSONIAN.COM 31Geologist-owner
John Gregg,
here in Baja,
plans to turn
the Flyer into a
fl oating class-
room, plying
the 1940 route,
opposite.“I swore to myself I would get in the lab somehow,
just to see it,” says Gregg. “I don’t remember a con-
scious decision to get the Western Flyer and fi x it up.
I assumed it would happen, even though I had no
proof the boat still existed.”
Gregg spent decades looking for the Flyer. “No-
body in Monterey knew anything,” he says, “but
I heard a few things in the Pacifi c Northwest and
Alaska. Whenever I was up there, I would check at
the boatyards and fi shing docks, and ask about the
Flyer. People would say, ‘No, it’s been crushed,’ and,
‘Yes, it’s fi shing in Alaska,’ and, ‘No, it sank, but so-
and-so has the wheel.’”
Finally, in 2011, Gregg learned that the boat’s name
had been changed to Gemini, and it was owned by a
real estate developer and Steinbeck fan named Ger-
ry Kehoe. “I called Kehoe,” says Gregg, “and I kept
calling him for two years, but I couldn’t get a reply.”
The old retired boat was moored in a slough near
Anacortes, Washington, in very poor condition, but
Kehoe had big plans. He was going to cut it into piec-
es and reassemble it in the lobby of a new hotel, or
turn it into a fl oating restaurant on an indoor moat
in a former haberdashery, as part of a new tourist
complex in Salinas, California, where Steinbeck was
born and grew up. Before Kehoe could realize his
plans, a plank ruptured in the boat’s hull and it sank.
It cost him a reported $100,000 to raise the boat.
Four months later, in January 2013, it sank again—
and stayed down for nearly six months.
“When they got her raised and into dry dock at Port
Townsend, Kehoe started taking my calls,” says Gregg.
“He fi nally agreed to meet me in a restaurant in Sali-
nas. We both had our lawyers there. Kehoe is a gruff ,
tough, old Irish guy and he was staring at me across
the booth. In the fi rst ten seconds, he knew I was going
to buy the boat and pay too much for it. I knew it too.”
Kehoe said the boat would cost $1.5 million. Gregg
off ered $200,000. They had another meeting a few
months later. “My lawyer was my brother Andy, and
he was kicking me under the table when I agreed to
pay a million,” says Gregg. “I knew it was way too
much, but I wanted to make it happen. I’ve never
been a money person. If you spend too much, you
can make some more. That’s how I looked at it. Then
I had to post a $25,000 bond because the boat was
derelict, and the boatyard had valued it at zero. That
did give me pause.”
Gregg will admit to love, obsession and “border-
line folly” in his relationship with the Western Flyer,
but he insists that sentimental nostalgia is not part
of it. “I always wanted to use the boat as an ambassa-
dor to do something new and interesting and scien-
tifi cally important,” he says. “And I think that’s what
Steinbeck and Ricketts would have wanted. They
had no nostalgia for old things.”“I always wanted to use the
boat as an ambassador
to do something new
and interesting and
scientifi cally important.”