The Day I Fell In Love With Classic Boats!

Hasn’t some guy named John who lives in Virginia been saying something about going boating for years now?

As for m-fine in NY, there is still snow falling this morning and we are not past the point where you could get a cracked block or manifolds overnight so I will not be boating until May.

Snow here in southwest Michigan too. It’s gotta start warming up soon, the Woodies are getting restless! I remember when I was a kid, 1967 or so, my Dad was shopping for used boat and we looked at a couple wood outboards. I talked him out of it thinking the more modern fiberglass was cooler. I truly regret that now. Dad always admired the lapstrake Thompson’s and Cruiser’s. He never had one. It took me until about 2008 to wise up. Iam a slow learner.

I got hooked at age 13. My dad worked part time at a liquor store on Lake Congamon and I use to go with him and sit on the cement pier watching the boats go by. One day a Chris Craft went by in the no wake zone and that sound never left me. It took me 40 years to do something about it but if someone hadn’t been out that day I would not have been lured in.

If you want to attract a new generation to Woody boating you gotta make it cool and you gotta make it sexy. And I’m not talking about our idea of cool and sexy. Don’t know exactly how to do that. I leave it up to the marketing guys to figure out.

Never restore a wood boat on your driveway – a never ending parade of admirers stopping by to look and talk. I really slows a days work down, but also it’s very enjoyable to discuss woodies. Later, it’s delays at the launch ramp!

While reliving our mispent youth…Mine began in 1938 while aquaplaning behind a big ole GarWood on Lake Winnepesaukee. Then in the ’50’s & ’60’sI thought all the wood boats went to the burn pile and I succumbed to a plastic 17′ Cobia ski boat behind which my kids and their friends learned to water ski. Wood or plastic, there is nothing like ole memories. My kids and now their kids seem to like boats whether wood or plastic.

This is how my oldest Son David got hooked on boating with Grandma teaching how to drive.

My boating started a few months after my birth. We had a cottage on the Sni, not far from the Chris Craft plant on Lake St Clair. Our island cottage was built by hand, by my grandfather, and still stands today; a testimony to his excellent building skills.

My mother was raised on the island, and my grandfather had dozens of boats, from hydroplane racers, to big triples, to cruisers, over the years as she was growing up. Alas, they were all gone when I arrived on the scene. I will post some pics at a later time; my grandfather looked like a movie star, and mother was Miss Jr Michigan, so the pictures have that glamorous feel.

We used a steel flat bottomed row boat, powered by a Johnson 5 1/2 outboard; which I still have, along with a CC outboard. We progressed to a 17ft Thompson with a 75 Johnson that was the boat we used for many years (our first boat was a Ownes fiberglass boat that my mother hated; she ran it into a tree one night and sunk it. It was not intentional, and was my first of two boat sinkings). The look of the wood and varnish, the sounds, always stayed with me. There were not many boats around back then, so when I heard the “blub, blub, blub” of a Chris Craft cruiser slowly passing by the cottage, I always raced out front to stare, the sounds and sight captivating my imagination. I was in heaven with each passing boat.

Our neighbor up the channel, Rick and Iz Novack (?) threw huge parties at their large island at the top of the Sni. It was a magical place, with a very long dock, the posts always freshly painted in white with a red top (a lake St Clair tradition for the “smart set”), the island had two houses, with a foot bridge between. The docks were filled with wooden boats: lapstrakes, and varnished boats, dozens, all coming for the music, drinking, and dancing. It was like being in a fairy tale to this young boy.

We would run our boats day or night, through the hidden channels in the marsh that only the locals knew, many no wider than the boat itself. To this day, I love boating at night and feel very comfortable; knowing only the chart in my head, and the lights using their language to guild me home safely.

I was first able to pilot that flat bottom boat made of steel around our island when I was around four. I then earned my mothers respect to go a few islands up and down the channel on my own. Even at an early age, power was everything. I boy a few islands up was “rich”. They had a cruiser and he had an aluminum boat with a 7 1/2 outboard. He always could beat me in a race!!

We later got a 16ft Sea Ray, then a 22ft. I soon had my own 13ft Whaler, then a Hobie Cat, then a new 27ft Express cruiser when I turned 27.

But I needed wood. So at 29 years old I bought the U-22 I still have today. I have owned bigger fiberglass boats, but this is the one that speaks to my soul.

Many years later, I found a picture of one of my grandfathers boats; a U-22! I guess certain things are passed down through osmosis.

The “Flats” as that area is known, was, and still is, a magical place. There were many “characters” back then, as this was not an area of the affluent. One family ( This was later confirmed by an old timer, who thought they were part of the Smith family) had a pet lion that rode on the bow of his big varnished speed boat. There were “blind pigs”, my mother used to go to in her youth (a speakeasy). There were cottages where the people just “disappeared” that I visited, where the dishes were still on the table next to the 1978 newspaper. Everything was like they just walked out the door years earlier and never came back! My mother loved to take the row boat and “explore” abandoned cottages. One island was huge (at the corner of the North channel and the Middle Channel) and that person also just walked away. He left a big 25-27ft Chris Craft named “old Buck” tied to his dock, where it sank. Over the years the boat returned itself to the elements; first the deck, and eventually only ribs, like a dead elephant on the Serengeti, remained. He also left all the antique furniture and a large sailboat in the barn. After a few decades of it being vacant, we removed a beautiful table at night; my mother, being the honest woman she was, left a check.

So for me, the boat was just one part of what made me be the person I am. It was also the sense of first responsibility, of knowing the water by instinct, the weather by feel, the sense of exploration and mystery, and living without electricity, phones, or running water. On that island, life became what life should be; simplicity. The joys come from the people, conversation, and our own imagination.

Me, in my grandfather’s wooden boat which he built, with a 35hp Johnson, circa 1970.