Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill ACBS New Bern North Carolina Is A Hit!
John Justice (left) giving Best Barbour award to Linda & Phil Holland for their Barbour Sliver Clipper, La De Dah. (photo by Stephanie Currier)
Thanks to fellow Woody Boater Judy Hills for sending us in this report from New Bern NC. A new location for the ACBS Chapter. Take it away Judy.
Joy riders—the Martinson family. (photo by Judy Hills)
Our chapter’s 11 th annual boat show was held in New Bern, NC which is located at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers. The Galley Store Marina downtown hosted the show. This was a new venue for the club so we were all anxious to see how well the site worked for the show. Well, we are pleased to report that we had an exceptional show! It began on Friday, May 20 th with a tour of the Hatteras Yacht plant led by former Hatteras boat captain and club member, Alan Hills. The Hatteras staff was very accommodating and the tour was most impressive. “I always wanted to see how they made those boats,” said South Carolina attendee Ed Arrington.
Joy riders—the Hills’ family (photo by Jim Alexander)
Friday evening was the Captains’ welcome party which was held at the Galley Store in its upstairs gathering room. The intimate space overlooking the wine shop led to lots of conversation where attendees got to know one another and share stories on their much-loved hobby.
Saturday, May 21 st was show day. The weather forecast was for some showers, but the day ended up being cool and overcast with a light wind—good conditions for a show. There were nine boats in the water and about 20 displayed on the land. A steady stream of people came by the site all day long due to the extensive marketing of the show in various media (all free we might add).
Poster
The featured boat for the show was the Barbour, which were manufactured in New Bern. The show poster’s background was old Barbour Boat Works brochures. Trent Cadillac, Buick, GMC had a display at the show and one of their associates, Gail Grady, told us that her father had worked for Barbour and that he was one of the people shown driving the boat on the brochure that was on the show poster.
Image courtesy of the Barbour Facebook Page
Image courtesy of the Barbour Facebook Page
Another Barbour tale from the show, the NC Maritime Museum was showing a Barbour Rocket from their collection at the Beaufort site. Sam Rivenbark, a relative of the founder of Barbour, gave them the history of the boat which differed from the one they had on it. Many people stopped by specifically to see the Barbour boats.
Eastern Carolina Yacht Club’s basin bathed in moonlight on Saturday night. (photo by Stephanie Currier)
Saturday evening, the participants were treated to a wonderful dinner at the Eastern Carolina Yacht Club located on the Trent River. The club members not only hosted our group, but they also cooked and served the meal. Another tie to Barbour—the serving bar was the bow of a Barbour boat. We gathered for drinks on the deck overlooking the river, shared the delicious meal and then gave out the awards. A Barbour Silver Clipper named La De Dah owned by New Bern residents Phil and Linda Holland walked away with a number of awards including: Best Lapstrake, Best Barbour, and Captain’s Choice. Those who came by boat had the pleasure of a leisurely moonlight cruise back to the show site. The evening could not have been more perfect.
Heading to lunch on Sunday. (photo by Judy Hills)
Sunday morning there was a cruise on the Neuse River up to Fairfield Harbour where the group had lunch at the Sun Rise, Sun Set Restaurant. It was a lovely day for this event.
Those who did not attend missed a spectacular weekend. New Bern is a beautiful, hospitable little city and we were lucky to have great venues for all the events. The club is already making plans for a New Bern venue for next year’s show. We hope you’ll be there with us. You can visit their website HERE
Great story, thanks for sharing. Everyone must be out boating, here it is 10:35, and I am the first one posting. We got a wet start for our West Michigan weekend, so here I am…
I want to applaud this Chapter for putting on a schedule where the exhibitors got to USE their boats. We are seeing more and more shows incorporate activities on the water, a chance to use your boat, not just SIT at a dock.
The more the organizers do this, I think the more the attendance will increase. We discussed this trend at the last ACBS quarterly meeting. The younger (30 to 50 year olds) who have nice classic boats, but do not consider them worthy of putting them in any Classic boat show, will see this trend as a way to cruise with other classics, and get more use out of their vessel. Time is scarce for this age group with children and job commitments. The last thing they want to do is sit ALL DAY at a boat show dock. Three to four hours maybe, if they know they will still have cruising time during the weekend.
In my opinion, the 8am to 4pm show hours are on the way out.
Always a pleasure to read and learn a little about some of the limited run boat builders of days gone by… Out here on the west coast, I’ve never heard of Barbour boats. I would love to see some pictures of the award winning boat!
Like you Dennis, the PNW is in our typical wet spring mode right now so we aren’t going boating this weekend ;-(… But at least it is giving me the time to get the finishing details wrapped up on our boat! I just finished installing my new faux wood, vinyl flooring! Totally not original but the real stuff (red nautalex) is long since discontinued and after 7 years of searching we have yet to come up with any. So restomod approach was for something that looked cool and might hold up to the wear & tear of a ski boat..
Brian,
where did you get the faux wood and what is it made out of? I am interested in some for my cruiser but the plastic teak flooring is very expensive.
Tom, the stuff I used is a fiberglass backed vinyl flooring (comes on a 12′ long roll). I am using the Armstrong brand “pressure sensitive, double backed, adhesive, tape”, so far it seems to be working great but it also hasn’t been out the garage yet… It came from Home Depot and is $8.91 per square yard. I have the “Sentinel Tavola Gunstock”. I really like one of their Pergo flooring planks but in our ski boat we have “free formed” curvature along the storage bins and there was no way I could get the thicker planks to follow that shape… So I went with the vinyl roll type that I can cut with a strong pair of scissors!
You can find more information about the 1952 race boat “Cap’n Hub” on the Barbour Boat community page. The Beaufort Maritime Museum will do more about it later. Someone who actually raced that boat is meeting today with the museum to discuss the proper racing colors and what motors were used.
AS ONE OF THE HOSTS AT THE EASTERN CAROLINA YACHT CLUB I WOULD LIKE TO SAY WE HAD A GREAT TIME AND IT WAS WONDERFUL TO SEE THOSE CLASSICS AT OUR DOCKS. I AM GOING TO TRY TO POST SOME PICTURES.