Like many travel journals, this is a collection of maps, words, photographs and drawings, but it is also the story of a boat, a famous book, and the woman who inspired my trip.
The Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez and the Vermillion Sea, is one of Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystems. Teeming with marine life, it was once nicknamed the “Aquarium of the World” by oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
In April, I was lucky enough to set sail on the Gulf, taking part in a once-in-a-lifetime trip aboard Uncruise Adventures’ Safari Voyager. For ten days, we traveled alongside the newly restored Western Flyer, following in the footsteps of the famous fishing boat’s 1940 biological collecting voyage.
If you compare the maps, you’ll see that while we retraced much of the 1940 route along the Baja peninsula, we didn’t cross over to mainland Mexico.
If you’re not a marine biologist or an avid reader of California author John Steinbeck, you may never have heard of the Western Flyer or “Sea of Cortez- A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research,” the book that made the boat famous.
According to Penguin Random House publishers, “The collaboration of two friends—one a novelist, one a marine biologist—produced a volume in which fascinating popular science is woven into a narrative of man’s dreams, his ideals, and his accomplishments through the centuries.”
Biological, philosophical and often funny, the original edition of Sea of Cortez includes a thick phyletic catalogue at the end which details the extensive collection of tidepool animals gathered by Steinbeck’s crew of seven in 1940, as they made a biological exploration of the Gulf’s intertidal species. Here’s a wonderful short film about the voyage, narrated by Nick Offerman and produced by the talented storytellers at Soulcraft Allstars.
In the narrative portion of the book, Steinbeck writes from the perspective of a collective “we,” which clearly includes him and his co-author Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and early ecologist. He names four other crew members, Tiny, Sparky, Tex and Tony, but neglects to mention that there was also a woman aboard the Western Flyer during their six weeks on the Sea of Cortez.
The expedition’s seventh crew member was Steinbeck’s first wife Carol, a smart, beautiful woman who swore like a sailor, had a razor-sharp sense of humor, and loved books and red wine. According to Tony Berry, the boat’s captain, she was a helpful crew member, and was always the first person aboard the skiff to go collecting in the tide pools with John and Ed. He also recalled that she was “good” about seventy-five percent of the time. There was trouble brewing on the boat, and Steinbeck would leave Carol for his Hollywood mistress a year after they returned from their famous trip.
Carol was John Steinbeck’s primary sounding board and editor during the most critically acclaimed years of his writing career. Not only did she help Steinbeck come up with central themes for his books, but she also came up with the titles for his novels “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” She left no written record of her time aboard the Western Flyer in 1940, but her name is frequently mentioned in the other crew member’s oral and written accounts of the trip.
Rose Berry, Tony Berry, Carol Steinbeck,
John Steinbeck, Tiny Colletto (photo from the Martha Heasley
Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies- San Jose State University)
I relied on these recollections as I embarked on the adventure of writing a historical fiction novel about the 1940 expedition to the Sea of Cortez, from Carol’s point of view.
My research began in late 2020, when I traveled to the Monterey Peninsula to visit the extensive Steinbeck collections at SJSU and in Salinas and see where Carol lived, worked and played. In 2021, I took trip to the Sea of Cortez. But the last puzzle piece fell into place when I learned that the Western Flyer had been pulled up, rotting and covered in barnacles, from the bottom of a harbor in Anacortes, Washington and was being lovingly restored by Chris Chase and his team of shipwrights as a research and education vessel.
It was amazing to be on the Monterey pier for the Western Flyer’s homecoming in 2024. Watching her motor into the harbor, cheered by hundreds, was magical, and I finally got to tour the boat I’d been writing about for four years. I sat on Carol’s bunk, ran my hand across the table in the galley, and walked the decks I’d been writing about. But the top (flying) deck that Steinbeck wrote about so lovingly was roped off, as was the fish hold, which was being transformed into a science lab. I longed to see what it felt like to be aboard the boat when she was out at sea.
And so, when the opportunity arose to join a group of scientists and artists and Steinbeck experts and enthusiasts aboard a boat sailing alongside the Western Flyer upon her return to the Gulf of California, I leapt at the chance to see the boat in action as I immersed myself in nature and Steinbeck lore.
Tuesday, April 14, 2025 (Embarkation at La Paz)
After flying into San Jose del Cabo on Monday, we (my husband Ken and I) took the Uncruise shuttle across the peninsula the next day. The Baja California desert is spectacular, and we spotted several crested caracara falcons sitting atop enormous Cardon cacti as we made our way to La Paz, where our maritime adventure would begin.
Once famous for its beautiful pearls, La Paz is a picturesque seaside town, with whales splashing in the harbor and a palm-lined beach promenade featuring beautiful sculptures. Steinbeck and his crew stopped in La Paz back in 1940, and John’s short novel “The Pearl” was likely inspired by a story he heard there. While anchored in the harbor, Carol reportedly jumped off the boat to swim and ruined an expensive watch John had given her.
It thrilling to see the Western Flyer and Safari Voyager tied up at La Paz’s city pier as our bus pulled into town. After meeting up with the boats’ crews and our fellow passengers, we set sail under the setting sun, champagne in hand.
Wednesday, April 16, Punta Marcial, Baja California Sur
After motoring north all night, we woke to find ourselves anchored off the rocky coast of Punta Marcial. We could see the Western Flyer nearby, where her onboard scientists had been up early, taking DNA samples and measurements from the sea.
A few mobula rays poked triangular fins out of the water near the boat, occasionally flinging themselves out of the water like exploding popcorn kernels. Looking out at the Flyer, it was amazing to think that Carol Steinbeck had been in the same vicinity on March 24, 1940, and that the Steinbeck expedition had collected on the same shores we were about to explore. Later that day, I looked back at what the crew had written about the spot 85 years ago.
After breakfast, we all got fitted for wetsuits and went over safety stuff. Anxious to get in the water, I snorkeled at Punta Marcial that afternoon rather than joining the group that went tidepooling that first day. The fish, coral and invertebrates of the underwater landscape were stunning, and afterwards, I shed my wetsuit to explore some of the tidepools before catching a Zodiac back to the big boat.
When we motored back for dinner, the Western Flyer was anchored beside the Safari Voyager. I could hardly wait to visit her in the next day or two.
Back on the boat, we each got a sketchbook, watercolor pencils and a brush. For the rest of the trip, I used the art supplies to take notes and make sketches- some “en plein air” and a few from photos I took or objects we found. We were lucky enough to have a professional nature journalist, John Muir Laws, on board to inspire us and give us some workshops. That evening after dinner, one of the wonderful expedition leaders from the Safari Voyager gave a short talk about Baja and the Gulf of California.
Cool (and sad) fact: The Colorado River once flowed into the norther tip of the Gulf of California, bringing with it red sediments, but dams built by humans over the last hundred years, beginning with the Hoover Dam in 1930, dried up the rich river delta and its ecosystems. Today virtually no fresh water from the river reaches the gulf.
And did I mention how beautiful sunsets are in the Gulf?
Thursday, April 17, 2025, San Lucas Cove
Sunrise on Thursday found us anchored near San Lucas Cove, a mangrove-flanked inlet separated from the sea by a long, rock-covered sand bar. The cove’s expansive sand flats were only accessible through a narrow channel, and John Steinbeck recalled in Sea of Cortez that they’d been eager to explore the sandbar but had to wait for the morning tide in order to get their skiff through the powerful current.
I’d signed up to join the tide pool explorations that morning and hopped on a Zodiak filled with eco-explorers and kayakers. After motoring through the channel and splashing to the beach, we proceeded to explore the expansive sandflats.
One of the things that made this trip so special were the people. We had onboard a wife and husband team who collectively know more about the 1940 Western Flyer expedition, the invertebrates of the Sea of Cortez, the book Sea of Cortez, and John and Carol Steinbeck, than anyone else in the world: Steinbeck scholar and author Susan Shillinglaw and Stanford marine biologist William Gilly, who everyone calls “Gilly.”
More about Susan later, but Gilly was our tidepool expedition leader throughout the trip, helping us identify and record all the invertebrate species we found, so we could compare them to what John, Ed and Carol collected back in 1940. With the help of a few volunteers, we kept a running list of all the species we could identify at each spot.
Although we spotted swimming crabs scurrying away through the water, and I found a big puffer fish hiding in mangrove roots down the shore, the best place to spot marine life was under the rocks. We flipped the large stones over, one by one, examining the life underneath before carefully returning them to their original positions, careful not to squash any of the animals we’d observed. Several of the rocks were crusted with oysters, and we also found hermit crabs, porcelain crabs, chitons, limpets, anemones, fire worms and adeptly named “garbonzo” clams.
The seaward side of the sand bar was strewn with rocks, sun-bleached shells, driftwood, seaweed and a few pieces of trash. A lone gull sat atop a big cardon cactus and watched me pick my way across the rocks.
After eating a delicious lunch, we set out on our afternoon adventures. I’d signed up to visit the Western Flyer and hopped on a Zodiak to zoom through the water to the famous sardine boat. I’d never climbed from a “skiff” up the ladder to a bigger boat, and it was helpful to have that experience from a writing standpoint. It was a pretty calm day, but we used caution so we wouldn’t pinch our fingers between the ladder and the boat, and I could imagine how tricky it would be in the wind.
Onboard the Flyer, we got to hear about the research of two scientists aboard the boat and watched them collect samples.
In addition to helping filter seawater samples that would be used to study environmental DNA, we lowered a Secchi disc into the water and found that the visibility was only about one meter, due to all the plankton.
Next we lowered a plankton net and followed a marine biologist down to the laboratory in the old fish hold. She placed a drop of plankton-laden water under a microscope and projected the image on a screen so we could watch organisms such as diatoms, dinoflagellates and barnacle larvae twitching and scooting around.
Before leaving the boat, I got to climb up to the flying deck and stand atop the boat, where Carol and John Steinbeck lingered under the starts with their friend Ed Ricketts in 1940, telling stories and talking about biology, philosophy and metaphysics. I could hardly wait to see what adventures the next day would bring.