Fans of Steinbeck will recall that the fishing boat that he and Ed Ricketts took to the Sea of Cortez was named the Western Flyer. Her modern day namesake here at MBARI is quite a different ship indeed. The R/V Western Flyer is small water plane twin hull design (SWATH), fancy way of saying she is twin hulled. At 117ft, she can handle a compliment of 26 (10 crew, 5 ROV Tiburon crew, and 11 scientists) for around 2 weeks. If specs get you excited as they do me, they are here.
click above for larger photo
oooh oooh! I’ve been on the Western Flyer … for a short 3-day coring cruise over a year ago. They needed some assistance (i.e., slave labor) for processing sediment cores as they came up with the Tiburon ROV. See my short post here.
Watching those guys fly and operate the Tiburon from the control room is pretty dang fun!
Any idea what the original purpose of the F/V Western Flyer was? Looks like an old tuna seiner with that crow’s nest.
Not to take away from the new version, though — she’s pretty!
The top one reminds me of the shrimp trawlers I used to see in the Florida Keys. The bottom one looks like something from a futuristic SCI Fi movie! REAL Cool!
Dave Briggs :~)
FishGuyDave,
Your right, an old seiner she was.