Did You Know the Cofounder of the Legendary "Whole Earth Catalog" Lives on a Century-Old Tugboat?

Decades after he launched the revered counterculture almanac, Stewart Brand and his wife, Ryan Phelan, turned a derelict ship into a home on San Francisco Bay.

May 8, 2024 - 18:34

Did You Know the Cofounder of the Legendary "Whole Earth Catalog" Lives on a Century-Old Tugboat?

Decades after he launched the revered counterculture almanac, Stewart Brand and his wife, Ryan Phelan, turned a derelict ship into a home on San Francisco Bay.

It’s a silvery winter morning in Sausalito, California, and the docks of Waldo Point Harbor are still slick from last evening’s showers and the cool coastal mist. Lights flicker on as I walk past rows of handcrafted houseboats and spot Stewart Brand waving from the deck of the Mirene, the 1912 tugboat on which he’s lived with his wife, Ryan Phelan, for over 40 years.

"She was built as a gasoline schooner, and her mission was going to be working in Alaska bringing fish from the deep-sea fishers into port," says Stewart. "She was so strongly built that she didn’t have much cargo space, and so she flunked out." The Mirene found work ferrying goods and passengers throughout the Pacific Northwest, and in the ’30s she was converted into a diesel tug for hauling log rafts along the Columbia and Willamette rivers. Her sturdy wood hull survived groundings on sand spits, brushes with fire, and the occasional misadventure.