#12 Makes A Statement In Skaneateles NY
One of the cool parts of Woody Boater is being able to promote stuff. Like plastic this year. Pushing out stuff thats cool and also available. A couple months ago we found such a boat on ebay.. This very rare, Read more about it here! 1965 Fiberglass Sea Skiff. You know this sucker is built like a tank. #12 of 80 built in Cortland NY.. And with its trusty Chevrolet 327F marine conversion and Paragon gear with 740 total hours. it has lots of life in her! ALL the rest were built out of wood. Well, Mr ACBS President Brian Gagnon grabbed this up fast, deal done and last week at the big ACBS International show, there she was. Going out and having fun..
Something interesting happens when the President of the ACBS owns a fun Fiberglass Sea Skiff.. It becomes far more than a boat.. It becomes a statement about access to fun boats, a statement about fiberglass and as the President, a statement of inclusion.. Heck, if Brian has one, you can bring yours to a show or event.
Rare 1965 Fiberglass Sea Skiff
Each year, more and more fun fiberglass mid 60’s and 70’s boats show up.. We could not be more excited.. No really, these boats make the events more fun.. Either as a party barge like m-fines Penn Yan, or Brian’s fancy green show boat! So here’s to you Brian! Thanks for making having fun look .. well.. fun!
A close up of the very cool bow light. We just got a comment from Cliff pointing this out. WOW..
Cuts watta like butta!
And we are outta here!
I always likes the bow light, tucked into the rub rail. You will never see that again. The coast guard thinks everything needs ship lights today. Great little boat that can take water like a bigger boat. Good times.
Thanks Cliff, I had no idea! How cool is that, I placed a close up in the story!
When you first posted the ebay ad, I thought long and hard about bringing that boat home to NY. With the Penn Yan, another skiff style glass boat didn’t really fit a need and I let it go. When I found out who bought it, I was glad I passed. Not only is she in good hands, as you said, it made a statement when Brian brought it to his coronation that would have been missed.
You can find more info on this boat at the Commander Forum site. Dave Krugler restored this and is one proud man. Kudos to all!
http://www.network54.com/Forum/424840/
Sweet!
Wow- thanks for the coverage on this 1965 Chris Craft fiberglass Sea Skiff GUA 200012N which I owned for about 5 years and spent a good couple of years restoring. The boat was carefully put away last winter as always and garaged at our summer home in Garden Michigan just west of Manistique. It had seen little use as the weather has not been kind there and we put in one summer of very low water levels. I decided to sell the boat last winter and thanks to WoodyBoater found a great new home. Thanks so much for the coverage. Dave Krugler Port Huron, MI
If you want to come home dry after a cruise go in a Sea Skiff, wood or fiberglass…..and if you can’t find a Skiff…look for a Lyman
Or a Chetek!
Congratulations to Dave for such a nice restoration, and Congrats to Brian for his good taste in style and function too. Brian’s acquisition will provide an inspiration to a lot of others to bring out their classic glass too. Yay !!
This particular fiberglass hull is shared with the early Corsair Sea-V which ran in production from 1964-1968 (they were white gelcoat), while the 80 Sea Skiff hulls were green (well we think the very last one was white). 220 inboard Sea-V hulls were built along with 425 Transdrive hulls. The inboards got the small Chevy while all the Transdrive models got V6 or small Eaton (Ford) power. Early models like the #12 hull Brian has and the #39 hull I have, usd wood stringers to suspend the engine over the fiberglass hull; later evolution on the Corsair Sea-V started using an all fiberglass box beam construction like the big Commanders. Love the photos and coverage, thanks for doing that Matt. regards, Paul
Nice but not as pretty as the woody version
Kid, is that your 26′?
Brian has one sweet boat, that can get up and go. I can attest to that, cause I was driving the photo shoot boat, Lyman Tyme, while Matt took these pictures. We had a blast being part of this action, and now seeing the results in todays WoodyBoater.
Thanks Matt for letting us be part of the “behind the scenes” action again.
Gotta Luv A lapstrake!
These ‘contemporary classics’ are fun, reliable, and relatively easy to maintain. During the loooooong restoration on my Matthews Martinique I had sold my sailboat. Living on the water we decided to find a nice runabout to get us around. Naturally I wanted classic wood but my wife said I already had enough ‘wood’ on my plate, so we found a nice ’69 FG Century 18′ Resorter. On one of our tours around the bay we saw a neighbors 22′ Sportsman about 6″ below her waterline — we notified them & they pulled her out (bad seam).
With the FG Century I never worried about coming home from work to find her like this — I always thoroughly checked all through hull systems before launching in the late Spring.
Flashback remains a beautiful looking runabout!
There is wood somewhere in that boat.