16 LAKESIDE
May 2021
The allure and history of old wooden boats I have always been fascinated by wooden boats, no matter whether they are sail, power or rowboats. My first boat was an eight-foot wooden dinghy that floated up on the beach after a hurricane. After unsuccessfully trying to find the owner, my father allowed me to keep it and I rowed for miles exploring up and down the river and all the creeks around. When I was in high school, I had an old 16-foot Barnegat Sneakbox, a 1930s era gaff rigged sailboat. This type of boat was designed way back in the mid-19th century for duck hunting among the marshy areas of Barnegat Bay, NJ. It had a removeable mast and a deck that curved extremely low down to the water so you could disguise it with marsh grass and “sneak up” on the ducks. A sort of moveable duck blind. It was perfect for knocking about the river and I spent many happy hours doing just that. At that time, my two younger brothers hung around with a couple of “rich” kids across the river who owned a brand-new runabout. That was my first encounter with a Chris-Craft. It was
began full production in the 1920s. Along came the Great DeVinnie pression and they survived by Mendes marketing their boats like automobiles at a time when recreOn the ational boats were considered Water only for the rich. They came up with some unique innovations still in use today. They coined the phrase “cabin-cruiser” among all varnished mahogany and others. They also built a gasoline chrome and looked like it was engine designed for marine use. doing 60 miles an hour even Before then most marine engines when sitting at the dock. were converted from aircraft or Whenever I was out sailing, automobile engines. At one time these two guys and my brothers they built houseboats, and even took great pleasure in zooming by sailboats. During World War II as close as possible making a they built landing craft which large wake and dousing me with took part in the Normandy Invaspray. This came to an end one sion. Sunday afternoon when they ran As boat building technology out of gas and I got a chance to advanced so did they, building tow them home. The memory is steel hulled and fiberglass yachts, still delicious, with their entire however I am still enthralled by family sitting out on the wellthe old mahogany runabouts. manicured lawn watching as I When you pull into a marina in sailed up to the dock with the run- the newest state-of-the-art ski about in tow. I can almost still boat or bass boat, people may say hear the tongue lashing their fa“nice boat.” Pull into that same ther gave them in front of everymarina in a varnished mahogany one. runabout from the 1950s and you Chris-Craft has been making draw a crowd of admirers. boats for well over 100 years, One of the things that I love starting out in the 1870s. They about wood is that a wooden
Wooden boats along Gaines Ferry Road.
plank will take a fair compound curve, so it naturally slips through the water efficiently. Without going into wave equations, vector analysis and Reynolds numbers, let me say that if a boat looks sleek it will probably move through the water with minimum effort. It is rare that an “ugly duckling” will have an efficient hull. Anyone who spends any time on the lake will admire how the older hulls glide gracefully along causing a minimum of ripple in the water. Opposed to that is the modern fiberglass cabin cruiser that looks like the front 30 feet of a 50-foot boat with the bow pointed toward the sky and the stern sunk down leaving a four-foot wake and dragging half
PHOTO BY VINNIE MENDES
the lake behind it, meanwhile burning 60 gallons of gas an hour. What brings all this to mind is that every day as I drive down Gaines Ferry Road, past the cherry and apple trees in bloom, I go by my neighbor Jim Kerry’s house. Out on his front lawn are usually two or three vintage runabouts. He does museum quality restorations on old wooden boats. Occasionally, I stop to admire them. Not only are the woodwork and chrome perfect, but the instruments, upholstery and controls are all to original specifications. Open the hatch to the engine compartment and there is a perfectly restored six-cylinder flathead painted Chris-Craft blue. See Mendes, page 17
