By Anthony Montabon, Land O’ Lakes Classic Boat Club Dancing Queen is a 1964 IMP (Iola Molded Plastics) Apache. It sports the original Mercury 65hp four cylinder two-stroke engine, original controls, and gas tanks. The horn is the original two-tone air horn powered by an air pump that sounds better than anything produced in the…
By Chuck and Diane Thornton, Land O’ Lakes Classic Boat Club During the winter of 1956-57, Gene Bartachek saw a Taft Marine Woodcraft kit boat ad in one of his favorite mechanics magazine. He requested their brochure and shortly afterwards ordered the Model 950, 18 ft. Offshore Cruiser. The price was $399 including shipping, minus…
by Bob Besel member of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter When we arrived at Tulsa the boat had been dragged from the shed, where the rig hibernated for 30 years, into a very dusty warehouse, on flat tires. I brought new wheels and tires, ‘hoping’ that the trailer bearings were fit for the 730 mile…
by Ken Powell member of the Bob Spletz Land-O-Lakes chapter For the last 28 years, at noon on Sunday of the August long weekend, a collection of antique wooden boats assemble a half mile from the town harbour in the little town of Kenora,Ontario, Canada. It is known as the HarbourFest Annual Wooden Boat Parade.…
by Steve & Kathy Flood members of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter Kathy and I bought our 1st boat – a yellow and white 14’ Crestliner with a 50 Evinrude – from Schwann’s Marine on Long Lake in Sarona, Wisconsin. For the maiden voyage, Bill Schwann, Jack Kunz the mechanic and I launched the boat…
by Denny Trooien member of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter The year was 1982. My wife Sue Ahlcrona and I had a 22’, 1948 Chris-Craft utility that we used on White Bear Lake, Minnesota. We also had a six-month-old son, who was our first child. As a young lawyer I did not have much extra…
by Dwain & Ginny Schuette members of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes In September of 2003, while looking for a classic wood boat to purchase, I came across a farmer that had an old boat sitting behind his barn. During our conversation, he asked if I would like to see his boat collection. The next day,…
by Joe Oliver member of the Penn NE/Harveys Lake chapter I grew up at Lake Winola, a 185-acre lake in Northeast Pennsylvania where I still live today, in the late 1950’s. I didn’t consider our family boats antique. There was our old Penn Yan with an Evinrude outboard, a plywood sailfish, an Old Town canoe,…
by Bob and Char Shadduck members of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter In December of 2015, I received a telephone call from David Watts of Little Rock Boat Works, Rice, MN, my boat restoration friend, regarding an unusual and significant boat needing total restoration and available for purchase. It was not an unusual call in…
by Rog Moberg member of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter According to the birth records of “Lollipop II”, she was sired in Little Falls, Minnesota at the Larson Boat Works in 1957. This was about the last full year that Larson was producing most all-wood models. The records show that she was delivered to the…
by Roger Norberg member of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter I grew up with the privilege of spending summers on a small lake in Northern Wisconsin. My first boat was given to me for my 9th birthday, a 14-foot aluminum Smoker Craft with a new 1966 9.5 Evinrude. In those days’ parents thought nothing of…
by John Nemmers member of the Bob Speltz Land-O-Lakes chapter The story of this 1965 Resorter ’17 (RS6558), originally christened “Carol Ann 3rd” after my two oldest sisters, begins on Otter Tail Lake in west central Minnesota. My father, a commercial and custom-built home contractor, built a summer cabin for our family in 1962, a…