Gregg is describing the restoration of the Western Flyer, the boat John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts took to the Sea of Cortez, which he restored for an environmental and research mission. The old-growth Douglas fir it was first built from no longer exists, so the team chose dense sapele planking for weight.
…they wanted to turn it into a statement of their skill and their pride that they had in their craft. And they did that. And the end result is, you know, I was lucky that they were stubborn and would do a half-assed job and made it a beautiful thing at the end that will last another hundred years.
Can you tell us about the wood that you had to acquire to do this? Because you can't just use any wood for a boat like that.
Yeah, it's kind of a learning point for me. And, you know, when they built the boat, they built it out of local materials. There was old growth Douglas fir, you know, within 30 miles of the boatyard in 1937. And, you know, they were able in yellow cedar and oak plenty. That doesn't exist anymore. And we also, you know, we have kind of an environmental mission in mind. So we wanted to build the boat with sustainably harvested wood. So having said that, we, you know, the boat was designed to carry, you know, 70 tons of fish in its hold. And we were going to replace that weight carrying capacity with a lab space that didn't weigh anything. So we had to add mast elsewhere. So we decided, okay, the best place to add weight is to keep it low and keep it instead of using Douglas fir planking. We'll use the Sapile wood, which is heavy and dense and will last forever. But we got it from the Congo, and the wood had to go from the Congo to be sustainably certified up to Germany where it was stamped with the NFC designation. And then it flew from Germany to France to be milled, and then it flew from France. To Washington State to be installed on the boat. So our…
Berea College,
Berea College, yeah. That's a very well sort of managed forest. And they've been managing this really carefully for over 100 years. So you have to kind of state your need for the wood. And then if they think it's a good case, they go out and you select the trees to be harvested. And they're only…
Yeah. And the woodworking itself is just so beautiful when I see the finished product. How much is actually original materials? Like what parts are, because I know not all of it, not much of it is, but there is some, isn't there?