The Western Flyer with Nick Offerman

A new film about John Steinbeck's adventures in the Sea of Cortez.

https://www.westernflyer.org/nick-offerman-film/

OMG, What a wonderful thing.

If you love history, old wooden boats, and the seas, you must watch this "grabber."

Thanks Woodman.

The Western Fly is now berthed in Moss landing. A friend of mine who lives in Seattle helped restore this boat.
My wife's grand father ran around with John Steinbeck when they were kids. Also Doc Ricketts. My wife and her sister used to clean Doc Rickett's lab on Canery Row. Her grand father is mentioned in the book Sea Of Cortez.
The family has a lot of photo's from the sardine days on Cannery Row. Most if not all of my wife's relatives worked at the Hovden Cannary canning the Monterey Sardines. Hovden Cannary is now the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Here's a photo of the western flyer. I'm trying to find a couple while it was in dry dock

Here's the boat when it arrived at the Monterey Harbour.

Amazing information Jay.


I think, in the late 1960s, when I worked at "the bait shop" in West Sac the sardines were almost all gone on the California coast.

We got frozen very large sardines from South America that were treated with formaldehyde.....yikes.

We really needed fresh sardines for bait in the Sacramento River, which was loaded in the Spring with millions of Stripers.

On the off-season the bait suppliers from Sothern Cal would call us and say they had just found a huge supply of sardines.

My boss, Harry Boley, would order up a large amount of wooden flats filled with iced down super fresh sardines.

We would put maybe 6 sardines in a half-gallon waxed cardboard milk carton filled with water and put them in our large walk-in freezer.

Then in the Spring during the huge Stripers run we had nice sardines for our best customers and our Striper guide service.

Today, good bait shops will carry dozens of different types of bait.