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Classic design Stauter Built wood runabout boat photo

Stauter-Built boats is a classic wood boat that often has used the same design as they have for many years.

classic wood boat photo from stauter built

Most are pure open fishing boats. A few are somewhat decked over and are used as a wooden runabout. All use a antique or modern outboard motor for power. They are light and easy to power as they use a shallow draft, almost flat bottom hull design to get performance from low horsepower outboards.

classic wood runabout boat photo

Take a restored classic wooden boat like I show here. Its powered by an old, antique motor. The photos show the loving attention to keeping an old boat, a good, useful boat that is an antique and classic boat show standout. She is mostly a plywood boat, glued and screwed together to take on most waters.

classic wood fishing boat stauter built

I show another Stauter Built boat from their promotional material. It is 151/2’ long and 51/2’ in its beam. It can take up to a 50 Hp. outboard engine and weights in around 425 lbs. It is a Vee shaped bow to cut through the chop coupled with a fairly flat deadrise across the transom boat design. Not a deep vee offshore racer.

She is intended for the waters around Dauphin Island in the Gulf of Mexico, which is roughly 40 miles south of Mobile, AL.

This new wood fishing boat is called the V-bottom Cedar Point Special by Stauter-Built. She maybe a classic in design, but it is too new in its date of manufacture to be an antique boat.

classic wood boat photo of a open fishing runabout outboard

wood boat photo of stauter built runabout fishing model

Wood power boat photo classic mahogany runabout

This runabout is custom designed by the famous marine architect Charlie Jannace from Delmar, MD (about 50 miles outside of St. Michaels, MD) telephone 410-883-3059 and hand made by the Hugh Saint boat building company in Cape Coral, FL telephone 239-574-1299.

Charlie designs both fiberglass and wood boats for many boat building clients (some for regular production and some one-off (custom) designs. He is a very experienced naval architect. And his boat designs work in the real world!

The Hugh Saint, Inc. boat building company builds in the WEST system of wood and epoxy. They typically use double planking of mahogany wood matching the wood’s grain where its important, encapsulating all that wood in epoxy so water never reaches it. They are not alone in building wood boats in this manner of construction style in today’s world of wood boat building.

mahogany wood cold molded runabout photo

This custom Gentleman’s Racer is 28 ½ ’ long with a 9’ beam. She is a performance boat, but not a race boat. In a gentleman’s racer strength, luxury, and a good, comfortable seating in the cockpit are balanced by sheer speed thrills. A fast, dry ride is important. Absolute top speed is not. Such a boat satisfies its owner, not a broad audience of boat buyers. She is powered by twin “small block” 350 cu. in. chevy gas engines using a v-drive drivetrain system to get the power to the two propellers to push the one off mahogany wood boat. The top speed is simply quoted as 50 mph plus. It gives that speed in luxury and comfort for its owner.

WEST system mahogany wood power boat photo

Want some outstanding color photographs of these storied boats? Get a collector grade copy of the vinyl covered hardback book titled Classic Powercraft volume I. The book is full of color pictures of antique and classic boats taken at the highest quality level for wooden boat photography. It is sold out of print, so a used book or a copy from a personal collection is the way to go for this great book.

Streblow Custom Boats are mahogany wooden runabouts built since the early nineteen fifties that set a standard of quality of design and workmanship for wood boats. These are wood runabouts that are doubled planked on their bottoms and batten seamed planked mahogany hull sides. A special finish technique and secret rot resistant construction techniques make these floating art works different from a regular wood boat.

The boat builder is located in Walworth, WI, (262-728-6898) near the shoreline of Geneva Lake where they are a boat builder, restoration shop, and a marine boat dealer.

While they do several millions of dollars of business each year, expect to wait up to three years in good times for a new boat. They only build up to two boats  in any given year to keep the quality up. Heck, it has been said that just selecting the wood for a boat takes weeks of combing through the choices of planking on hand.

Back to the book, get one for the photography. It is just the best there is out there on wood boats. The cover is even a full color photograph of a Streblow set into a lovely vinyl cover or binding.

Let me tell you a story about: John Hacker, the noted race boat and runabout  boat designer; Ernest Wilson, Harold Wilson, and Harold’s finance and later, wife, Lorna, a famous boat racing family; the Gold Cup races and its boat class; Greavette Boats of Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada; and Harry Miller of the famous Miller car racing engines fame. They were all involved in a Gold Cupper named Miss Canada II a racing boat.

Miss Canada II, the Gold Cup class race boat, was designed by Hacker for the Wilsons, at their request. They also engaged Miller to design and build a 1,000 Hp. engine  that met the rules of the racing class. The boat was built by Greavette and the Miller engine was shipped there for installation. The engine never did run at Greavette and it and the race boat were shipped off to Lake George, NY, which was the race site. On race day, the engine broke before the race started. Thus the boat and the famous Wilsons did not get to race. After repairs, the engine did work for three laps at a later in the season race, before it broke again. Thus, that year’s racing season went  past without Miss Canada II ever finishing any race, let alone winning a race.

The following racing season, the Greavette boat, Miller engine, and the racing Wilsons did get some competition laps in, but did not win a race as pieces of the boat interior broke up, and the boat, while fast, was found to be too lightly built to stay together long enough finish a race. Thus ended the second season of boat racing for Miss Canada II.

After more work over the following winter on both the engine and boat, she started her 3^rd racing season. The next summer, it was found out that the boat strengthening work done by the boat builder had changed the handling balance of Miss Canada II and she was deemed too hard to handle to win races and allow her driver and mechanic to stay alive while doing so.

The Wilsons ordered a new race boat from a different boat designer, for the next year. Miss Canada III, as the new boat was named, was a race winner.

Michael Aronow wrote this book about his Dad, Don Aronow, and Don’s involvement in boating. Don was a boat racer, a boat building businessman, a world champion, a founding leader of deep vee boat building and offshore racing. He started and owned Donzi Marine, Formula, Magnum Marine, Cigarette Racing Team, Squadron XII, and USA Racing Team and almost all of 188^th Street.

This is the book for a Christmas present to a boater.

John Crouse, Dick Genth, Yachting magazine, Jim Wynne, Mike Gordon, the Beatles, Chubby Brown, Walt Walters, the Donzi sweet 16, Bobby Moore, Knocky House, the models, some of the tricks, the Wyn-Mill II, the Banana  boat, outboards, inboards, I/O, Mercury Marine, Magnum Missile, Molinari, Carl Kiekhaefer, Aeromarine, Roger Penske, Betty Cook, and Mark Donohue are all in the book.

It is a who’s who of power boating and power boat racing offshore. A real history of the racing scene.

Don Aronow made the offshore power boat racing scene very early on and made it into the force it is today. He left New Jersey for south Florida while still a young man and built an empire of race wins, trophies, championships, boat building companies, showmanship, and hard work.

It is only really available on the collector book market. The ISBN number is 0945903227.

Get a nice one and have a good look all at the photos and a good read from the material that Michael shares about a rare man in the boating business in this boating book.

Edsel Ford needed a boat, and not just any boat, to use for commuting to and from his MI home and his huge Rouge River Ford automotive plant located on the Detroit River. He decided on a wood power boat for his needs, a custom 40’ triple cockpit mahogany runabout. One with a powerful engine.

The new wood runabout was named after her engine, Typhoon. A Wright Typhoon dirigible engine made 600 Hp. from her 12 cylinder, 2000 cu. inch gas engine. and that made the boat something that Ford’s doctors fear for his health. On their advice he put Typhoon up for sale, just four years after she first went into the water in 1930. Howard Hughes was one of her next owners.

Typhoon, now destroyed in a boat yard fire several years ago, was a monster. Designed by George W. Crouch and built in the Henry B. Nevins Shipyard in City Island, NY, she was forty feet of double planked highly varnished mahogany that reeked of speed on the water.

She was always a fast runabout.  She was repowered several times to go faster. The original Typhoon was replaced with an Allison aircraft engine and  then a 650 Hp V-12 Hall Scott was installed. Another replacement engine was a 1,500 Hp Packard.  As a side note to the replacement engine story line, the 1,500 Hp engine weighted less than the 650 Hp one. She also underwent several restorations before she burned and there were several periods of time in her life span were she just sat around. She was a monster on the water!

They made their first power pleasure yacht (or cruiser), Vernon Jr., which was 85 feet in 1901. This led to a full order book for wood power boats and yachts in the “under 100’ size” during the first 10 years of the 20^th century. It was the foundation of an American Heartland wood power boat building force from a visionary master boat builder.

They built pleasure, commercial, and government wood power boats for many years during the 1920s and during the depression. A series of 90’ power tug boats as well as minesweepers and subchasers added to their reputation as a quality power boat builder. They also created a few sailboats at this time.

Metal came to the Burger Boat Company with advances in welding. This was at the end of the depression era. The first metal boat for Burger Yacht builders was a ketch sailing vessel designed by a famous naval architect. She was a 81’ steel yacht. It was 1941 that saw the first steel power motor boat, Pilgrim, a 65’ flush deck design.

Aluminum joined steel in the selection of metals in a alumium 36’ power cruiser. The alumium sailing yacht Dyna set world on fire. She was a 58’ yawl built in aluminum. She won the Newport to Bermuda race. This all-alumium boat was calculated to be about 4 tons lighter than she built in wood and 5 tons less than she would displace in the water if steel was choosen as her hull choice.

Aluminum was now the material of choice for Burger Boat Company and power yachts were what they built.

Fast forward to 2011 and beyond; they have a contract for 98’ steel power passenger vessel for dinner cruises and private parties, a 60’ research vessel, and a 129’ (212 ton fully loaded) Alumium power yacht.

There are three companies associated with Dart Boats. All made their runabouts of wood, with oak and ash for the keel, chines, bent frames, station frames, and battens and mahogany for the planking. These are often true Mahogany runabout specifications. Dart was somewhat different in that they used brass angle plates in their construction as well as brass screws and copper rivets. The rivets and screws were said to be every “a row of rivets or screws every 4 inches from stem to stern” according to 1927 Dart Boat literature.

Dart Boats were first made by the Indian Lake Boat Company, Inc. in Lima, Ohio which licensed the Canadian boat builder, Greavette Boats Limited to make some of their designs and use their hardware. Greavette made just 31 boats under this license and then changed to another runabout design. Their Greavette Dart boats production were spread out among four models; two 18’ different boat models, plus a 23’ and a 26’ boat model.

In 1928 the name and rights to Dart Boats were sold by Indian Lake Boat Company to Dart Boats Incorporated in Toledo, Ohio which had Webb Hayes II, as its chief operating officer. He was the grandson of Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19^th President of the United States and ex-congressman and ex-Governor of Ohio. This company ended production and closed in 1933.

Dart Boats made two styles in a 18 ½’ length boat, a 22 1/2’ by 6’ 1” (the Dart Jr)., a 26’ by 6’ 8” (the Dart), a 29’ and a 30’. The longer boats were usually offered in several designs. A 30’ Gold Dart triple cockpit powered by a Chrysler Imperial engine was considered the top-of-the-line. A Silver Dart (26’) was another model name as well as the previously mentioned “Dart” and “Dart Jr”.

Irving J. “Hocky” Holler designed the boats (he also designed some Richardson Boats/Yachts, later) to handle the Lake Erie chop and they advertised that a Dart Boat design featured: “seaworthiness, speed per Hp, and ride quality” compared to other brands of the era.

GarWood speedboats first built wood runabouts as a triple cockpit boat in 1922. She was a 33’ long speedboat that used the hull shape and design from his race boats. This model was the famous Baby Gar. By 1927 Gar Wood added a second Baby Gar triple cockpit in a 28’ length. By 1930, these were joined in production with a 22’ speedboat. The 18’ and 25’ models came along in 1931. All these power boats were cockpit runabout speedboat models.

Wood was the boat building material of choice for all boat builders back then. Mahogany was used for planking and often oak for the framing. GarWood Boats were no different about the wood choices, just in the specific boat design details and the quality of the finished product. He and his company wanted the highest quality in all the boats that wore the Gar Wood name.

In 1935 GarWood added a 20’ utility (or open) runabout to its line of boats. This was its first utility design. More utilities were added in a 20’ length in 1936, a 18’ in 1936, and a 24’ utility in 1937. These power boats were all made of wood also.

No discussion about this yacht should happen without a mention about its yacht designer, Tom Fexas. He used some extra ordinary design skills, grand style, and technical acumen to create a special yacht in the Midnight Lace boats. He first used his thoughts about fast power cruising using modest power in his 44’ Midnight Lace model. I have driven an example of one of those cruisers in the Pacific Ocean. A very nice boat, but somewhat under powered as that one had twin small Renault engines under its cockpit. The Renaults also were smoky engines on that 44’ boat cruise and that was a fairly big issue to me at that time.Tom Fexas made a fast yacht in the Midnight Lace 52 by watching the hull weight and its balance along with a easy to push, narrow beam hull shape.

He has said that the design was “inspired…by the slippery old hulls…of the rumrunners” and the yacht designs of Consolidated and Elco boats.

She is a 52’ yacht with less than 10 tons in displacement! Her 13’ beam makes her narrow compared to other boats of this length. Yet the boat has a double berth master with its own head (with a short bath tub). Plus, a private guest stateroom that has two single berths and there is also a fully found second head.

Cheoy Lee built this yacht in 1983 using the latest fiberglass construction with coring for a light weight composite hull. They constructed a glorious interior to match her exterior design. She has since been updated and her equipment has been generously replaced as needed by an attentive yacht owner.

Oh yah, I saved the best for last…a Midnight Lace is a bow rider.

The photos are from Yachtworld.com that has this yacht currently for sale.