No ordinary workboat, Gemini was Western Flyer, the boat that author John Steinbeck and his marine biologist friend Ed Rickets chartered in 1940 for a trip to the Gulf of California.
Western Flyer Foundation
From an outside perspective, the ship wreckage found on Swinomish Indian Reservation land in Washington state in 2015 was just that, wreckage. The paint was peeling off the old 76-foot workboat named Gemini and holes littered the hull. Most might have simply passed by the wreckage, but it caught John Gregg’s eye. No ordinary workboat, Gemini was Western Flyer, the boat that author John Steinbeck and his marine biologist friend Ed Rickets chartered in 1940 for a trip to the Gulf of California. The research from that expedition became the subject of The Log from the Sea of Cortez, which won Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Gregg, a geologist, bought the Western Flyer for almost $1 million and has seen to her restoration over the past eight years. Currently, she is being set up as a research vessel and an educational platform for the waters off California. The restoration of a ship like this is not for the faint of heart. Gregg enlisted the help of the Port…
