 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Going to get a "new" old boat... By Kevin Marvel and Tamara Koch Every wooden boat owner can recall the first time they saw an old wood boat. Something about the lovely wood and the classic lines set each of us off on a quest, a quest to get one (or more!) of our own. My wife Tamara and I first got interested in old wood boats when we saw some advertised in the back of Cruising World magazine. At first, we were only interested in the Chris Craft Capri, preferably the 1955 model, but on our graduate student budget, even ones in poor shape were well out of our reach. After landing a job in Washington, moving across country from California (two sailboats in tow), buying a house and settling into our new "real" jobs, we had time once again to seek out our old wood boat. In the Spring of 2002, I found a 1950 Riviera in upper Michigan that needed restoration, but was structurally sound. With Tamara on a trip to visit her mother in Germany, I made the bold move of buying the boat and traveling north, trailer in tow, to pick her up. She was everything as advertised, but given my work schedule, it would be several years before I had her worked up into a floating condition. In my spare time I began her disassembly by carefully sketching and labeling each piece of deck and hardware as it came off the boat. Reassembly is the ultimate goal, of course, and for me at least accurate disassembly is the foundation of my restoration process. In the meantime, we wished we had a functional boat to actually get out on the Potomac near our home. I was repairing my Catalina 22 and building a cedar strip canoe for my father's retirement gift (lucky guy!), leaving only our 14' daysailer to get wet in. Having grown addicted to E-bay, we began watching the auctions hoping that a likely woodie at a reasonable price would come our way. In November of 2004, the boat showed up: a 1938 Chris Craft custom runabout that floated and had a working engine, but had not been well-cared for and had some clumsy plank replacements, incorrect deck hardware and some truly hideous upholstery (gold sparkles if you can imagine it). The picture on the auction showed her incorrect planking, but she was floating! Just to be sure, I called the seller and quizzed him a bit, ultimately asking for the hull number, which he provided and I got the information packet from the Mariner's Museum. Although the owner initially advertised his boat as a 1939 barrelback, it was clear that she was a slightly earlier model and definitely not a barrelback. The information packet confirmed this. We eagerly began Fully restored 1938 runabouts like this one have sold recently for as much as $70,000, with most selling in the $25- $35k range, so we were worried about what this one might fetch. The poorly replaced planks would probably keep the aficionados at bay, but what about the other beginning woodie enthusiasts like ourselves? The tension mounted. The auction started out at just $1,000 with no reserve, and slowly crept up to $7,500. We decided our limit was $12,000. As the hours remaining wound down, we realized we could get our dream. In the closing seconds, I hesitated, looking at Tamara and asking "Are you sure?". "Do it!", she shouted, and I hit the return key. We won! For $11,300, we now owned a piece of history. More specifically, we now owned a piece of history located near Duluth, Minnesota, with winter coming on fast. We acted quickly. I arranged for some days off from work. We prepared our F250 for the journey, made some playlists for our iPod, mounted the printed picture from the auction to the dashboard and got ready to go get the boat. Little did we know how trying the journey would be, but everything seems golden at the start of a trip, especially one with an old boat at the end of the road. Things started off well enough. We headed out early in the day, but not too early and managed to miss most of the rush-hour traffic in the DC area. We headed north to interstate 70, the easiest way to "go west, young man!". We stayed overnight with my Uncle in Bloomington, IL, after a very long drive. We totally lucked out with the weather, a huge high-pressure system had settled in over the eastern US and there was not even a single cloud in the sky. After a great breakfast the next morning we hit the road North. Neither Tamara nor I had been north of Chicago, so our adventure was about to begin. We left Illinois at about 11 am and began the long trek across Wisconsin. We were headed to Eau Claire and from there north on US route 53 to Duluth. Well, about an hour or so outside of Eau Claire, we had a tire blowout on the right rear of the truck. Tamara says it sounded like a jet plane buzzing us. I was a bit to freaked out to worry about the sound exactly. Luckily, the highway was pretty much empty and with no weight in the bed of the truck, it was a simple proposition to pull over to the side of the road. We were in dairy country (of course!) and right next to a cute little farm. I began to drop the spare out from under the truck (it was flat!) and loosen the lugnuts. While I was working, Tamara noticed an audience forming. We determined that F250s were used on the farm (we saw one in the distance), so our eager watchers must have been anticipating an extra feeding! I learned long ago while driving in the western states to have a cigarette lighter powered air pump handy and inflated the spare. Since we had talked about replacing all the tires before we left, we dropped into a Walmart Supercenter and ordered up 4 new tires. About 30 minutes later, we were good to go, (with an inflated spare too!). We made it to Eau Claire well after dark and started north on route 53. At the second stoplight in town, we noticed our front left decreasing in height...Yes, the unbelievable had happened...another flat! We pulled off and I changed my second truck tire of the day, while Tamara called the Walmart Sup ere enter and explained our problem. They were very helpful and called to another nearby Walmart arranging for the automotive service manager to stay after his 9 pm closing time. Crossing our fingers, we zoomed over and he happily swapped out our tire and checked the remaining ones as well, refusing any gratuity! It ended up the valve had been faulty. We were lucky to have made it all the way to Eau Claire, but luck was to be with us from here on out. We hit the road again and drove through the darkness and the Wisconsin wilderness. Coming over a hill toward the end of the highway, we saw Duluth, which was lit up like Disneyland. We made it to our hotel. Having a cell phone, we had called ahead to our seller and arranged for a meeting time of 7 am the next day, Sunday. We had to get back to DC by Monday night. We drove with the seller about 20 minutes north of Duluth to his lake house/summer residence and got to see the boat up close and personal for the first time. She did have some rot on her after all (despite seller's assurance there was none), but it wasn't substantial. Just a few deck planks and one side plank, all at the starboard stem. Climbing about in the boat and banging on frames convinced me she was a good deal...everything sounded nice and solid. We concluded business, tied down the cover and headed back south, boat in tow. The trailer was seemingly the original twin axle trailer from 1938, but with new tires. I was a bit nervous driving it at highway speeds. Actually, I now think it's a mid-50's trailer, but anyway, we'll untangle that later. The big problem with the trailer was that id did not have a spare tire and the bolt-hole pattern for the wheels was 6-holes. Given our experience with tires on the way north, we were concerned at not having a spare tire. We spent the whole first day of driving trying to call ahead to the next town's tire store to find a 6-hole spare. No luck. My uncle tried to help us out, but no 6- hole spares were anywhere near Bloomington. We bowled on toward Indiana, staying at a hotel near the Illinois-Indiana border. The next day, while crossing Indiana, we passed innumerable signs for two competing RV dealerships...one of them, I figured, had to have a spare tire for us. Well, they had a rim after stopping to check, so we bought that and then at the next National Tire and Battery store, we had a tire installed. Now the only thing remaining to get back to DC was the trip over the mountains. We zoomed out of the flats and up into the hills in eastern Ohio. My truck's overdrive was acting up, so on the big uphill runs, we had to turn that off, but we were making it. As the hours progressed and we knew we would make it, we got happier. Arriving home just shy of midnight we tucked our new beauty into the driveway and hit the hay. Later that week, we took it down to Belle Haven marina and put it into the water...it floated! Some leaking was evident, but it was not overwhelming...all part of the expected maintenance we would have to undertake. We were the proud owners of a functioning woodie. We eased her out of the marina and got her up to speed...what a thrill! We are now looking forward to participating fully in the ACBS activities in our region and meeting our fellow boat owners...we don't have a name for her yet, nor was she properly titled (ugh!), but once we deal with these technicalities, we will see you on the water!
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
About CBC |
Boat Festival
|
Calendar |
Galley |
 |
