Boats of all sizes drew interest on a recent Saturday that started out rainy but turned into a great day for a Mississippi Valley boat show.
The Mississippi Valley Chapter has its spring event on Lake St. Louis in eastern Missouri. This year the lake was at a very high water level, so because of potential damage to sea walls, the cruising was limited to “no wake” speed. So no trying to see how fast you can make the “old girl” go on her first outing of the season. Leisurely cruising was the order of the day.
Thank you to Jack Hartwig for sharing this event report and pictures:
Most of the scheduled participants braved the weather predictions and showed up as expected. We had twenty-five boats which for our size chapter and the weather prediction, is a decent turnout. At some point about two-thirds of the boats were in the water and the rest were land displays. One of the reasons we like the show at this time of year is that it allows most of us to try our boats for the first time of the season. Since many of us live fairly close to Lake St. Louis, we do not have to travel far to find out if we have problems that would cause us to simply turn around and go back home.
About twenty percent of the boats were new to our show. The variety was fairly good with the boats ranging from a two foot Chris Craft radio controlled model to a twenty foot replica “tugboat”. The smallest (the model) and the largest (the tugboat) generated great interest with the children, and the tugboat was by far the overall hit of the show.
The owner of the tug, Paul Fairchild is a highly skilled hobbyist welder and built the boat with steel. It weighs approximately 3 tons and is powered by a 2 cylinder 25 hp diesel motor. The hull is a Goliath Glenn-L design with his own super structure design. Construction started in October 2015, and when completed will have a galley, head, generator and sleep 3 people. As you can see from the picture he did a great job. As the boat was trailered into the parking lot, all heads turned and thought “you have got to be kidding”, we actually have a tugboat at our show. Paul was very accommodating and let visitors board the boat while it was still on the trailer. The children loved standing in the wheelhouse. The boat was then launched and was quite a site as it slowly cruised the lake.
As the weather turned good we were able to enjoy our surroundings at “Wind Jammer Point”. The point is a great venue for our show. It has a very nice set of docks, a good launch ramp, full restrooms, and best all a very nice pavilion for our lunch and pulled pork and “pot luck” dinner. Our lunch provides a nice way for the Lake St. Louis Water Ski Club to make some money and a convenient lunch for show attendees. They sell hot dogs, sandwiches, chips, cookies, and drinks with the proceeds going to their club.
After our dinner we held a short chapter meeting to discuss upcoming events. We then trailered the boats, packed up the displays, cleaned up the area and headed home with a thankful feeling for the change in weather and a satisfied feeling for another successful show.
Thank you to Dan Peggs, president of Mississippi Valley Chapter, for forwarding the report and pictures from Jack Hartwig. Pictured at the top of this post is “Classic Plastic”, a 1961 Redfish Model 18 with a 1965 Mercury owned by David & Victoria Wann.
1948 Penn Yan Cartopper 12′ owned by Glenn and June Folkerts
1958 Thompson with Evinrude owned by Dale & Janet Roth
1958 Delta 16′
What is your chapter doing or what project is yours? Take pictures. Email them to [email protected]. Hopefully, you will include people’s names, locations, even the boat story that goes with the picture.