Browse news articles, stories and media for the the Antique & Classic Boat Society; including photographs and stories related to ACBS International and it’s chapters.
LCACBS: The Early Years It was in 1985 that a group of people from New York and Vermont, who were interested in boats, joined together to start the Lake Champlain Chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society (LCACBS). Location defined our chapter because Lake Champlain borders both New York and Vermont. We look north…
Manistee, Michigan, is one of those logging era boomtowns of the late 1800’s that sprang up along the shores of Lake Michigan. Wood from the local forests built Chicago twice: once before the Great Fire of 1871 and again after it. Starting in 1929, the Century Boat Company began manufacturing boats in Manistee and continued…
What do you get when you combine a Navy Yard Patrol boat, a 1966 Marinette and side by side before-and-after restoration examples of vintage boats? The 37th Annual Chesapeake Bay Chapter’s boat show in St. Michael’s, Maryland, of course! The weekend was beautiful and so were the boats! From the opportunity board and ride some…
Charter Date: November 11, 1978 Chapter History On September 2, 1977, when ACBS was just three years old, president Bill Willig and director, Bil Morgan visited Port Huron and Sandy Duffy who knew of a Hacker Dolphin that Willig wanted to see. During their visit, the future of ACBS was discussed including the possibility of…
Story and Pictures by Andy Hoffman and ACBS Sponsor, Classic Boat Collective Donn Beck’s family bought a cabin on an Island on Buckeye Lake, which is just outside of Columbus, OH, in 1957. When they bought the cabin a Chris-Craft 22 Sportsman was included in the sale. Donn and his family enjoyed the boat until…
By Randy Fletcher, 1000 Islands Chapter Photo credit: Larry Assam Photography It was a beautiful day, warm, windy, and a great day for boating. Heidi and I decided to take Serenity out for a shake down cruise after lunch. We launched in late April, but the rain and cold temps had kept us from going…
Our Chapter History Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia is a beautiful, 20,000-acre, man-made lake with over 500 miles of shoreline. It is nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains of western Virginia between the cities of Roanoke and Lynchburg. The lake first reached full pond in 1966, making it 25 years old when our…
by Alan E. Dinn, Historian, Purdy Boat Company The Purdy Boat Company was created in 1916 by Carl Graham Fisher of Indiana. Fisher was an automobile- and boat racing enthusiast, and a co-founder of the Indianapolis Speedway. Fisher had known and admired brothers Ned and Gil Purdy when he had bought boats they had designed…
Formerly known as the Okanagan Chapter, the Western Canadian chapter of ACBS is located in Kelowna, British Columbia, in the middle of the Okanagan Valley, a four-hours-drive east from the city of Vancouver. When a small group of classic boat enthusiasts met over 20 years to discuss the concept of an antique and classic boat…
By Matthew Schulte, ACBS Member and Executive Director SSHSA For those of us ACBS members who can’t get enough information about our boating heritage then think in a big way, think steamship history…. well “Ship History” to be precise. The Steamship Historical Society of America (SSHSA) is a non-profit organization and is an official marque…
In October of 1983 Constitution and By-Laws were adopted and The Antique & Classic Boat Society Southern California Chapter was born. At the helm, with more than a decade of experience in the vintage boating community through his company California Classic Boats, was founding Chapter President and future Hagerty Marine Hall of Fame inductee Al…
The North Carolina Coastal & Piedmont Chapter organized their first and hopefully annual National River Cleanup Day event held on May 17, 2025. Cleaning up the shores and waterway of the Tar-Pamlico River in the Washington, North Carolina, over 30 volunteers and 12 facilitators removed about 25 bags of trash, and larger items like lawn…