SEABUDDY
ON BOATS

Archive for the ‘classic Chris craft boats’ Category

This one is a 1954 Chris craft. An ideal mahogany classic two cockpit runabout. With a big flathead Chris Craft she gives a great ride at normal antique and classic boat speeds and a real thrill when the throttle is opened up even more.

Specs on the boat is 18’ 11” in length and she has a beam of 6’ 1”. Her overall weight runs in the 2,100 to 2,400 lbs. area. Chris Craft built 503 of them in a production series from 1948 to 1954.

She is not a bow rider and one must change which cockpit to sit in at dockside, as this power boat is a true runabout and not a utility. She is almost all deck, engine room, two rows of seats and little, if any, walking around room in the cockpit areas.

I got a ride on a Pennsylvania Lake in a similar boat that belongs to a friend that was also lovingly restored and its ride and handling during that fresh water cruise was really a terrific experience. That one had an extremely special Chris Craft engine rebuild by an out of state noted engine builder of classic engines.

Chris Craft offered this wood power boat model in either a natural wood stained and highly varnished hull and deck or as a painted red and white finished powerboat. Most came with the seating areas finished in a Chinese red or red hue, but blue was a choice, as I understand it, but not in all of the model years the Racing Runabout was built post WWII.

The photos are from Moores Marine,  www.woodenboatrepair.com  that did this runabout’s restoration. Great workmanship and attention to detail is shown in the work coming from Moores you can see.

This one is a 1954 model Chris Craft

early on in the restoration work

The Legend of Chris-Craft (3^rd edition) authored by Jeffrey L. Rodengen is a great book. I had a first edition copy and am very happy that I bought this 3^rd edition when it came out. It is now a rare book on the used book marketplace. One book that every boater needs to have in his collection about boats and boating.

It (the 1998 edition) sells for about ten times the price of the first edition. Get your thinking about the price to pay for an excellent copy to a dollar figure north of $100. It is that much in demand. That is for a used copy that is in better shape than what most book stores sell as a “new” book. What I am talking about is a book that looks as if it just came out of a shipping carton and has had no “floor time”.

What is the book about? Chris Craft power boats. From its origins, when Christopher Columbus Smith carved his first small rowboat out of a log in 1872 (as the story goes) to the first planked boat in 1874, to his first power boat in around 1894 and the story continues.

There were several companies and partners for Chris Smith in the early times and those details are fascinating to me. Gar Wood, Ryan, brothers, and sons all helped shape this success story. Race boats and runabout pleasure boats all were a part of the quality reputation that developed around Chris Craft power boats. Boat production went from 24 power boats in 1922 to 946 in 1929, for instance.

How the boat builder made their fine runabouts covers several sub issues, like owning their own rail road to how they dealt with the wood in early Chris Craft wood power boats. And then there were the engines and the World War II war effort. Plus the post war boating boom. Then the book covers the company and its products in the fifties to the nineties in detail. Overall a great read for all of us interested in boating.

Chris Craft Runabout

 This a Chris Craft runabout under rstoration at a company that does quality classic boat work, Wooden Boat Restoration LLC. I also have seen the boat all but finished except for final “punch List” work. She is a great sight to see. She is 15  1/2 feet in lenght and powered as a speed boat should.

Sly Fox is a classic wood runabout, with two cockpits and two rows of seating aboard with good room for all.

She uses a utility style layout for ease of acess between the two cockpits. An engine box keeps the mechanicals out of the seating areas.

Its a joy to explore the lakes and bays of america’s waterways in such an antique and classic boat. Its a different feeling than one gets in a new boat. People that share the water with you give you a smile and a wave as they like seeing you and the boat in use.

Classic boats are here along with historic planes and antique cars.  Wood Antique and classic booats as well as race boats are apart of this Florida event.  Enjoy the boats on the water and on land. Ideally, one would enjoy all three (land, sea, and air) in this one event.

January 27–30, 2011
Baltimore Convention Center
1 W Pratt Street (at Charles Street)  One block away from the Inner Harbor
Baltimore, MD 21201
 

Show Hours

Thursday, January 27, 2011
      11am–9pm 

Friday, January 28, 2011 
      11am–9pm 

Saturday, January 29, 2011 
      10am–9pm

Sunday, January 30, 2011 
      10am–5pm

NEW! Hands-on, Close Quarters Maneuvering Clinic 

Your author was born in the fall of 1948. In the winter of 1959, Chris Craft came out with a milestone brochure cover. On it, a 19 foot Silver Arrow was the speedboat featured out in front with a background of a 18 ft Continental runabout, 33 ft. Sport Fisherman, and a 55 foot Constellation Motor Yacht framing that Silver Arrow runabout.

Saturday, October 2, 2010 – after lusting for a ride in a Silver Arrow for 51 years, I got that ride in a perfectly restored one during The Philly Chapter of the ACBS Long Level Show.

The boat was a well-built,heavy craft that shouldered tall wakes out of the picture with the deft hand on the throttle and wheel of the boat’s owner, Dick Hickman. The weather was crisp, the boat was the “looker” on Long Level Lake in PA. and a near life-time year thing was well satisfied. Boy, do I love the ACBS and its two chapter’s in the Philly area and on the Chesapeake Bay. BTW, both Dick and I are members of each chapter.

In case you forgot, a Silver Arrow Chris Craft is a planked boat with a fiberglass deck and an inner bottom of sheet plywood. She uses spruce wood in place of mahogany for planking and set the boating world on its side when she was introduced. Unfortunately, her heavy weight (about 600 lbs extra over a 18 all-wood Chris Craft), pricing (about 25% higher than a 19 ft. Capri), and some new technology (deck to hull joint) only 92 were sold over the two years of its production. And not all of those still exist.

Chris Craft boats was a part time “duck hunting” wooden boat maker in 1874.

It became a fulltime boat building operation owned and run by Christopher Columbus Smith and his brother Henry later. The boats were a part of a mix of carving duck decoys and selling their “catch” at times.

1910 saw a two style boat builder, either boat runabouts or boat  race boats.

Now, in 1925, is the first use of the name “Chriscraft”, as a single word, run together. Boat sales were 111 units in 1925 including Chris Craft race boats.

In 1927 Chris Craft Boats first started building boats year around and 447 boats were made in runabouts, racing boats, commuters, and cabin boats called sedans..

Post WWII, Chris Craft used more and more styles of boats including cabin cruisers and cedar wood  joined various types of wood called mahogany. These pieces were made into planks and large panels, both in plywood sheets and also cut into planks arranged as both smooth-sided and clinker-built planked hulls.

In the fifties, by also expanding to other boat building material choices, Chris Craft reached higher sales levels. Steel, Aluminum, and Fiberglass added more choices and unit sales went over 8,000 units. Fiberglass cabin tops and other parts preceded  fiberglass hulls. Chris Craft boats, cruisers, and yachts built a good provn hull and they did not want to lose that in their transition to an all fiberglass boat.

Chris Craft had 10 open, two closed plants and an administration building in their business by 1965.

By the way, the latest good read on Chris Chris, the building of Chris Craft, and inside the factories is The new book by Tony Mollica and Chris Smith, ISBN 978-0-7603-3592-5.

Seabuddy recommends it as a great gift item to any boater.

Chris Smith, of Chris Craft fame, built a 50′ cruiser than won a 150 mile ocean race race from Miami to Key West in 1919. Its two war surplus engines were also preparded by Chris Smith. The yacht was owned and driven by Gar Wood. Gar and Chris were in a partnership titled Wood – Smith at the time.

credit must be given to the book  Building Chris Craft – inside the factories

by Tony Mollica with Chris Smith ISBN 978 0 7603 3592 5