It Takes A Classic Boat Village! Thank You From The 5200 Bottom Of Our Hearts!

Dave Bortner headed towards Algonac on the St Clair

This past Sunday the universe got to see a 5 minute glimpse into our little world. And what a snap shot it was. The crew from CBS Sunday Morning News, Reorter Conor Knighton, Producer Reid Overdahl did an amazing job. But so did some dedicated Woody Boaters. Today we tell you how it all came about, and how it almost didn’t.

Algonac on the way to the picnic

It all started with a call to Don Ayers of the Chris Craft Antique Boat Club. Don led them to some folks, like us here at Woody Boater, we in turn gave CBS a bunch of names and a destinations. They wanted to shoot soon and the Algonac show was soon, and a perfect setting for the history of Chris-Craft and Gar Wood.

Headed back from the picnic

After countless phone calls and information sharing, the shoot was set. As we arrived to the show, it was clear the weather was not going to cooperate, in fact it just dumped rain, then more rain, and to top it all off, more rain. The gang running the show from the Michigan Chapter of The ACBS tried to stop the rain, but to no avail.  There was a short window of not rain where our interview was done.

Wayne Everso and Coner in the Varnish room.

Wayne Everso’s from Everso marine interview was earlier and Pete Bouregards was in the rain if the old factory.

Our pal Pete talking up Algonac.

Dave Botner of Freedom Boat Service and his famous shorts were shot at the picnic right before the rain.

Bortner and his shorts

The crew was there for three days shooting and interviewing, but was going to shoot boats on Sunday which never happened.

Lake Tahoe footage

So step in Don Ayers again, who supplied some wonderful drone footage by Glenn Campbell.. Not the signer, but a drone shooter guy. Not that he shoots at drones, .. OK, you know what I mean. and then Mark Sutterholm from Minnesota recalled footage that Ryan Rogers shot of the Gull lake show who supplied amazing footage .That’s the show footage in the sun that you see.

Footage from Minnesota

More Minnesota footage

All the other stuff was from Woody Boater and the Couburg Kids files of ads.

Old ads

Texx jumped in with some stuff. No one was asking for credit, or wanting money.  Even Norman Thayer made an apearence.

Thayer IV off to the fishing hole!

M-fine sans Bacon, Tommy from Katzs Marina and the YNOT Yacht guys made the cut as well!

The gang all just supplied what was needed for the culture to look good. And man oh man it looked great. I will add that there was a ton of stuff said. Each one of us was interviewed for over an hr.

I don’t recall a thing I said. But it must have been funny

To the CBS gangs credit, they did an amazing job writing, editor, Shilpi Gupta’s editing and making stuff look great and captured a perfect picture of who we all are in a short time. Any longer would have gotten a bit geekyer. I will add that 5 minutes of national TV on a award winning program is an amazing thing. You can not imagine what it would have cost just to run a 30 second TV commercial, not to mention shooting it. We are talking about 5 million people in our perfect demographic. It’s an easy $500,000 of exposure. Possibly more. So, for those of you that have yet to see the segment. You can see it here just by clicking and read the text on the CBS Sunday Morning site.

And if you dont want to even click on a link, here is the segment. You will still need to click something though, sorry.