- Boats, they've been around for thousands of years.

Essential for transportation, for commerce, for exploration today, primarily recreation.

Join us on a journey into what it takes to keep and maintain classic wooden boats.

We'll explore the craftsmanship, the history, and the stories from those who keep these vintage vessels on the water.

- Vintage vessels is made possible in part by -Kozmiuk wooden boats.

Custom wooden boat builder of ore sail and power boats traditionally built with old world craftsmanship.

Born from knowledge passed down through generations.

Custom built and restoration service at kozmiukwoodenboats.com The Grundy Insurance Classic Boat program was born from their family sailing tradition, offering vessels full agreed value coverage, protection from uninsured boaters, marine environmental damage, and search and rescue.

online@grundy.com Pettit Paint Captain's Varnish, available in pints, courts, gallons and aerosol.

This marine grade spray on varnish is made to protect wood from ultraviolet light drying to an amber color.

More information is available online at pettitpaint.com ACBS celebrating 50 years of vintage boating in 2025.

Chapter locations across North America can be found at acbs.org Closed captioning support is provided by Peter Henkel incorporated.

online at chris-craft-parts.com In today's show, we visit the antique boat show in Clayton, New York where we check out the Antique Boat Museum and meet up with some boat owners.

All right here on vintage vessels of the water.

- Hi, I am Rebecca Hopfinger.

I'm the executive director of the Antique Boat Museum here in Clayton, New York.

This is our 59th annual antique boat show and this year we have a special celebration of small craft highlighting haw correct craft, and of course old town canoes.

The museum started over 50 years ago, of course, as the 59th show.

That actually was the precursor to the museum forming as an actual museum.

And so we've grown over the last five and a half decades into one of the most noted freshwater recreational boating museums in the world My name is Brian Gruenauer, the owner and restorer of this boat is Thomas Gruenauer, my father.

This was lovingly restored over 34 year restoration privately done out of his home shop.

This is a 1928 triple cockpit, 24 foot Chris Smith and Son Runabout.

- Good morning.

My name is Tom Gruenauer.

I live just outside of Buffalo, New York and I've been in the antique boat hobby since probably 1983 ish.

And I just really enjoy working on 'em.

I purchased this boat in 1989 and spent the last 34 years restoring it by myself and with the help of my sons in my workshop at home.

This is the third time it's been in the water.

The first time was about three weeks ago to put mark the water line and then one boat show in Hammonds Port New York.

And now this boat show, that's the third time it's been in the water.

It's a 1928 24 foot Chris Smith and Sons Chris Craft.

It was actually built prior to the incorporation of the Chris Craft Company.

So that's why it's called Chris Smith and Sons as the builder.

And it's model number three, it's 24 feet long and the original price of the boat was $2,750.

When a brand new model a roadster was 850, the or the engine, it's a Chrysler Imperial LM dash C and the paperwork from the factory says it came with a Chrysler Imperial LM dash C. It's not a numbers serial number matching, but in the bold boat world, that doesn't mean as much as it does in the car world.

The engine was originally in a Chrysler Imperial automobile and it's about 110, 112 horsepower was I was looking for a project and I knew it was gonna take me a long time to do so.

I decided if I'm gonna do something, you gotta get something that's when it's done is gonna be impressive.

And the bigger boats I feel are are kind of impressive from Chris Craft.

About 10 or 15 years ago, my daughter looks at me and says, dad is ticking you forever to restore that boat.

And that's why it's named Forever1928 - I wasn't too happy about that.

No.

Yes, the seats have been redone, but this is original.

So I usually do get dinged a couple fur.

There's a couple spots on the, but since it's original, I don't wanna mess with it.

- Phil Bougie from Ottawa, Canada and the boat is a 22 foot little gentleman's racer.

I built it over 25 years as a kid, I've always liked going boating and with my grandfather who had older boats like this and I'm a handy woodworker kind of guy.

And one day I said, I want to build a a boat.

And I started, I got some plans and I built it.

The engine in the boat comes from one of my grandfather's boats.

It was rebuilt and all redone.

So it, it's kind of nice to have the, the legacy of the grandfather's boat.

- My name is Jonathan Senecal.

The boat's name is Patriot.

My father had her built after the Twin Towers, so she's loud and proud.

I'm currently the caretaker 'cause my father passed away and this is kind of his legacy.

And she's a replica of a 1936 ner, Which Ner had a boatyard based out of New Jersey.

The Japanese needed a boat to carry a 500 pound bomb in the front.

So that's initially where the design came from was Ner was trying to design, design something that could go 65 and carry a lot of weight.

What's happening here today is we're having a lot of awesome pieces of live history.

Come here.

We have Zipper, Pardon Me on the water.

She has a Packard Aircraft engine in her Cicada, has a Liberty aircraft engine in her, and that's a World War I aircraft engine.

So this is really just an awesome event where people who have a passion for history, fun, speed, can come together and enjoy.

So the words my dad lived by, I don't know if you can see it, those, those are the words I live by too.

Wide open throttle.

So that's why he had it built.

Everybody rings, bracelets we're all set.

All good, - All good.

- When my dad's best friend Kevin, you see the boat house with a the cone on the top of it.

My dad's best friend Kevin, when my dad didn't have a boat, got my dad to the boating, let my dad use his race boats.

And then I think Kevin passed away like 11 years ago.

And then my dad kept his memory alive and now it's for me to keep my dad's memory alive and that's awesome.

The whole purpose of this.

How fast have you gotten there?

65.

She does great and chop, but when you have those big boats, cause those rolls, right?

Like she's the perfect length where she'll just stuff it every time.

So that's why when the big container ships go by, you have to see it and surf it or get away from it.

- All right?

Yeah.

So we're just demoing today bronze casting with silicon bronze, just different bits and parts.

So not all of it'll be used, but a lot of it's like demo stuff.

But we just cast warlock over there.

We're gonna be doing some, some cam nuts for some clamps that we built.

And a friend of mine wants a caulking iron, even though they're not traditionally made out of bronze, we're gonna do one for a small boat.

So, so right now I'm just packing sand.

This is like resin bonded sand that we use.

It's reusable and if you pack it tight it really shows details.

And so that's what I'm doing right now.

We're, we're replicating parts for different boats.

We do that by melting metal and then pouring it into a mold.

Oh I got a furnace over there.

Walk all that direction.

You can check it out.

- A powder on - Here, it's just baby powder.

It's a parting agent between the two sides of the mole because the sand is sticky.

This is just reusable oak pieces that we use.

This will be where I pour into.

So it's a heavy volume piece.

So I made kind of a heavier, the thicker of the two.

So more volume can go in.

We usually use, I use like little wooden pieces.

So if I was gonna do a series of things, I could hook 'em all together with something like this or if it was a larger piece like this and they're cut with a draft so I'm able to pull them out of the mold.

That's why they're kind of all funny and conical shaped, tapered.

And if we packed it correctly, you'll know.

You'll know right away.

All right, so what we can do is we can pull out where we're gonna pull, okay.

And then use this really fancy tool, melon baller.

We just clean that up so when we put it back on, nothing falls in really's blown out of the mold, right?

And then this, this is just a bronze mallet head for a buddy for working on things.

Kind of wiggle this a little bit.

Just helps it pop without getting wild on me.

Okay.

It's pretty - Clean.

- Not too bad.

We'll just knock that back.

We knock this back.

It's gonna end up with a little bit of flash like that right there, which is gonna end up looking like that, which is fine.

What you don't want is things in there that'll let let you have not enough metal.

These flashes are too much metal.

You gotta clean it up anyway, so I don't, if I was more of an anal person, I might care, but I'm not use my ice pick and I'm gonna go into some corners and I support it coming out.

Oh wow.

Like so - Shoot.

- I'm gonna do another one and we'll do an experiment.

We're gonna do one vent on one side and two on the other.

See if it makes a difference because we're just playing.

I'm gonna set it back guys.

So now we've removed it.

We have our form of what we're pouring.

This box is keyed.

These triangles are different sizes here 'cause you gotta pour fast.

It actually can separate the molds, right?

Because it'll go in faster than it can vent out.

So we just clamp it.

This is a bigger piece.

We put like some weights over here or half your best chance of success is when you see it come out in those vents.

So we'll let that cool down.

Is that one cold now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We cast that one like 25 minutes ago or so, half hour ago.

It's still warm but you can check that out and touch it if you want.

- Now building.

That's that.

Yep.

- Hey Michael, - This is Jack Ryberg.

My name's Mike Turcotte Jack owns this boat, we built it for him in 2010.

It's a 28 foot Garwood runabout with a V 10 Dodge Piper motor marinize by Elmore.

And we've enjoyed this boat on the St. Lawrence River.

It's hometown in Red Lake, lake George, and New Hampshire and pretty much all over the northeast.

- I like the runabout instead of the Streamliner.

I just, I think it looks better in the water.

- The secondary windshield of the runabout is 1937.

Styling all the hardware is a duplicate of 1937.

And the hull is the same design as well and it's amazing how well it handles we when we added more power to it.

That's, this is the first boat that we added the 570 horsepower to.

And it, it handles like a dream.

And it, it's, it's a, it looks like a classic boat, which it is, but it, it's also a race car.

It's all - Got - My name's Tom Turcotte and my brother Larry.

We're judging this, we're we're judges here at the 59th annual Antique Boat Museum show.

They're all beautiful boats, but there's certain imperfections you come across.

So you look at the finish fit and finish, you look at the, how the hardware finishes and you look at changes that have been made to the boat over the years as, and you compare it as to how it would've been when one originally left the builder's facility from working in the business for years.

It's like we know what to look for, how they, how they were built.

- And they keep putting the hacker on there and there's a plaque on that dash that says it was built by a guy named Frank Solar in Shimon, New York.

I've Googled Shamo, which is right down the road here, but okay, I've googled that guy's name.

Shamo Boat Builder.

I can't find anything.

You know this thing's so old.

Everybody that had anything to do with is dead.

Yeah.

You know where next - Gonna take care of?

You want John to two, I'm one of three people that were involved in the restoration of it.

I'm Roger Johnson from Cherry Hill Boat Works, that's Ken Smith works.

And the builder of the hull was Fish Brothers Marine.

And basically we got the hut from Fish Brothers and the two of us collaborated and put the whole thing together.

Why this boat?

Because it's unique.

It's the only one that Chris Craft ever built in this configuration.

And we figured we needed, the owner of the boat is a collector of many boats and cars and he needed something unique 'cause he's basically had one of every single boat there is out there.

And the unique part about this thing is the windshield.

Okay.

All right.

The basic, the windshield was only built for this boat and as you can see here, it's a disappearing windshield.

It goes right here.

But it has the opportunity of being pulled up for a regular windshield.

- This is unique that it has the twin fuel tanks in there, but in between the twin fuel tanks we had to get 4, 2 4 inch exhausts and some steering gear.

And the modern fuel injected motor has a, a return like a car has.

So there's extra fuel lines that have to return fuel to the tanks.

So there's a lot of rigging going on under here.

And the older I get the harder it is to get back out of the bilge.

- We, how are you?

Nice to meet you sir.

So you must be Dwight?

No I'm not.

He is not Dwight here yet.

But we're the ones that brought the boat down for him and Okay.

Basically put it together.

First of all, thank you for bringing this boat.

It is beautiful.

The one and so - We're gonna start off, gonna do a nice cruise for the first 20 minutes.

Then when we come back we are going to show you what it can do a high speed.

And the museum has requested that after, as we come back, that we do a two fly-by the museum.

So don't get nervous when we do that.

That's not, and it'll be fun for you.

Makes better.

And you're gonna get your photo taken a lot.

So, so let's try to get you on here.

Let me see if we can get this a little closer.

- You don't mind?

Oh yeah.

- I'm Mike Cregg I'm the owner of the custom race boat 1949 vintage called Miss Comet It was made in Detroit, Michigan.

The gentleman that designed it was Man Oche and his other famous boat is the Delphine, which is now owned by the king of Morocco.

The boat spent quite a bit of time racing around the Detroit River and was eventually sold to Sierra Boat works on Lake Tahoe.

The boats first and only full restoration was done by a woman and her daughter.

And they finished the restoration just the day before the Tahoe show and won the overall best of show as a result of their restoration.

The boat has twin 350 horsepower Hemi engines and a top speed has been documented between 85 and a hundred miles an hour.

So it's a pretty slick ride.

And a very unique boat manufactured by Danny Foster, who is a Gold Cup racer and winner.

This was a Navy prototype experimental engine.

So he used that and then modified it to get the speed and performance that he was looking for.

- So my name is Joe Connor and I am week four of a 12 week bui\bu build of a St.Lawrence Skiff.

So behind you on the wall there is the design of a boat that was built here in Clayton in 1885.

This is a row sail skiff.

The design is very similar to boats that you'd see, you know, throughout antiquity.

It's, it's a basic lap strike boat.

You know, it look really similar to a lot of boats.

You would see in Scandinavia, kind of Viking influence boats.

The spin that they put on it here on the St. Lawrence is instead of having a steering ore, they went with this centerboard trunk.

And I'm gonna walk over here and show you 'cause I've got one hanging on the end of the lofting here.

So this is a retractable centerboard.

It mounts right in this, in this oak keel here.

And the idea is, you know, centerboard down, you're going up wind a combination of your sail trim and the weight in the boat is how you steer it.

So centerboard up, you're going downwind weight goes to the back of the boat.

And I saw some pictures and was reading a really interesting John Gardner article about the skiffs that they pack, you know, up to six or seven people into these boats and sail 'em out to the fishing grounds or to the islands.

They were really popular before engines, you know, became really prevalent in boats around here.

So it, you know, it looks a lot like a canoe.

It be, it really is like very similar, but it's a sail row.

I am, I'm almost halfway through planking here.

So you can see I've got a ton of clamps.

I'm starting in the middle and I nail, I'm clenched nailing these out.

The clenched nails are a little Copper t that I'm using.

As they go through the plank.

I've got my backing iron and as I found it through, essentially as soon as the copper T goes through the inside of the plank, it hits this and I'm angling in across the grain.

And then it actually clinches itself over.

So with every stroke, the copper tack is bending over slowly.

You're not just sending it through and then hammering it in one stroke 'cause you'd break the copper that way.

So clench, nailing is, you know, is pretty common.

Riveting would be another way to do it.

But most of the boats in this area were clench nailed.

So that's how we're doing it on this build.

When I get done with the boat in September, it will join the Gaffney Gallery, the livery over there where the museum lets people take the boats out 12 to four daily.

So with any admission to the museum, you actually get to take the boats out here, which I think is one of the, the finer points of the museum as going, - This is a Dan Kidney built before the turn of the century, sometime in the 1890s.

- We, we love this boat in terms of being able to, to drive it, steer it, it go, you, you put it in place, it goes, it goes straight.

It got a lot of, a lot of power.

- Vintage vessels is made possible in part by -Kozmiuk wooden boats.

Custom wooden boat builder of ore sail and power boats traditionally built with old world craftsmanship.

Born from knowledge passed down through generations.

Custom built and restoration service at kozmiukwoodenboats.com The Grundy Insurance Classic Boat program was born from their family sailing tradition, offering vessels full agreed value coverage, protection from uninsured boaters, marine environmental damage, and search and rescue.

online@grundy.com Pettit Paint Captain's Varnish, available in pints, courts, gallons and aerosol.

This marine grade spray on varnish is made to protect wood from ultraviolet light drying to an amber color.

More information is available online at pettitpaint.com ACBS celebrating 50 years of vintage boating in 2025.

Chapter locations across North America can be found at acbs.org Closed captioning support is provided by Peter Henkel incorporated.

online at chris-craft-parts.com