In Defense Of My Classic Boater Friends, The Seams.
I was feeling rather defensive about my seams again until I saw this photo on the web that was taken in 1941. So the boat was relatively new when photographed, not a 41 for sure, but newer for the day. As I looked closer at the shot I saw my familiar friends “The Seams”. My swell friends that go boating with me all the time. What hit me was that the shrinking and swelling are as much a part of my boat as the gas smell, load noise and water in the bilge. Its all part of it. And that eliminating anyone of those things takes away the joy and pain combo that makes classic boating so much fun. Kinda like salt and sugar. You need both to appreciate each of them. So I am no longer defensive about my seams as I have been in the past. They are now just another member of my boating family.
You should have said “those darn Chris Crafts” in reference
to the picture posted on the blog this morning.
IMHO, those seams are like that in the picture because they
didn’t leave enough space for the planks to swell, because
those production boats Chris Craft built are real crap built by
people that had little or no experience building anything but
little runabouts 20 feet or less, and that’s why so few of the big
ones survived. Go look at pictures of some better quality boats
of the era, like Elco’s, Huckins, Matthews and you won’t see that
kind of thing, I don’t think. It is nothing but poor design and/or
workmanship. It is not that big of a deal in the smaller boats, but
in the larger ones, it becomes an exponential issue.
That’s my sense of it, go ask Don Dannenberg or somebody that
has experience with bigger power or sailboats and see if they agree
with me or not.
Joe Martell, is that you?
Matt, Thats just what i was thinking…lol.