Riva Aquarama wood boat photo

Simply put, the book to have about Riva boats. It was copyrighted / printed in Italy and is now out-of-print. You have to search www.Amazon.com for a used copy. My thought for you? Get one when it is listed for sale as they do not become available all the time.

Riva covers the wood boat era of Riva including the Aquarama, which is to be the featured marque at the Lake Tahoe Antique and Classic Boat Society show this year. That should add value to this book as that is a popular Classic Boat show. The book also covers the Ariston and Super Ariston and why they are different from each other. The book also covers the Florida, SuperFlorida, and Tritone boat models as well.

Some say that until Carlo Riva, a runabout was called a “Chris Craft” like when cellophane tape was called “Scotch Tape” by many. The Chris Craft brand was that strong post-World War II. His boats were the ones to successfully challenge “Chris Craft” as the boat to lust after when the most “carefree” era came forth to the world. He took his family’s boat yard and turned it into a legend after the war.

The boat, the ride, the service, the fellow boat owners all were perceived as the simply the best in the world. The history of Carlo and the Riva boat building yard is all covered in the book. It is one of the main sections within the structure of Roberto Franzoni’s book. While it has copy in English the text is international as other languages are also included. All the rare photos are captioned in three languages also.  Unique styling details are covered in equally rare drawings.

Movie stars were style leaders in the 1950s and they owned Rivas. Brigitte Bardot is shown behind the wheel of one of the several Riva runabouts that she owned. Peter Sellers is shown behind the helm of a Riva and Leslie Caron was photographed peaking out from inside a Riva bow cuddy cabin. Of course, Anita Ekberg was shown in a Riva runabout. That boat had a very special interior finish, by the way. Heads of State, royal families, Saudi Kings and others also are shown in their connection with Riva.

I could go on and on about this book, it is that special, but I will end now. Get one for yourself, if you find one.

Riva Aquarama wood boat photo of the cockpit interior

interior of a Riva wood boat photo

classic wood Riva boat photo

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of 419 examples of this model size built the year that she was made and one of the best old style ski boats is this mahogany Century 16’ Resorter model. This one has a replacement 260 Hp Chevy Mercruiser inboard V-8 for power and she really goes when a skier says “hit it”. She is a high speed, speedboat.

A wood runabout Century boat has a good amount of v (vee) at the bow that flattens aft for a very shallow amount of deadrise for the most speed and quick acceleration that a performance boat on lake waters needs.

Further, a Resorter Century from this era used the light but strong batten seam construction style for her hull construction. She has many athwart ship frames as well as having seam covering longitudinal battens that the planks are both fastened to (A separate wood batten runs behind all of the planking seams to add strength and water tightness to the hull in this style of boat building).

 A hard chine, v-bottom mahogany runabout was and is the runabout style of choice for many water sports. She is best described as a utility, as each passenger row is easy to get between, rather than being described as a twin cockpit mahogany speedboat.

Straight shaft inboard runabouts with their separate prop, rudder, and propeller strut, are one of the oldest, most reliable ways to design a timber boat. And, Century was a quality leader in both design and styling in the 1950s era. This classic mahogany runabout was the official tow boat brand in the late 1950s, not a Chris Craft.

Century Boat Company started in the wood boat business in 1926 and by 1969 had stopped production of wood hulled boats as they continued on with fiberglass boats.

The photos are from antique boat america.com that has this boat for sale.

16 century wood boat 1959 model

Dashboard of the 16' Resorter Century

AHacker Craft underway on the Lake

Hacker Craft makes wood boats even today in the USA. They continue to believe that a wood boat offers the best qualities of ride and performance for a recreational boater to enjoy our waterways. Wood is not the path to the lowest price for enjoyment on the water, but for a hobby, how far up in importance is price?

With Hacker Craft being located on Lake George in upstate New York, the highest achievement of boating fun is often tied up at a nearby dock at the signature lake. Feel the experience of a fine wood classic craft for yourself if you are in the market for a boat. I did and must say, I was impressed with the ride and handling of a Hacker Craft inboard.

She rides level, takes a good chop very well, and gives a solid bite on the water for all on board. This is a signature boat – an excellent example of what boating can be about.

By the way, Neiman Marcus will have a Hacker Craft in its upcoming Christmas catalog this year.

a new Hacker Craft at the dock