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.
By Todd Nouse (Waterford, MI) It’s a Long Tale. Hang in There In the early ‘60s, the Detroit River Yachting Association, now the Detroit Regional Yachting Association was, and is the parent organization for Detroit area yacht clubs that wish to hold sail racing events. Each club (9 if I remember correctly) was invited to…
Boat owner: John and Julie Stax Boat: 1959 Lyman Sleeper 23-feet Boat name: Moon Cusser Mooncusser is our summer oasis, taking us on multi-day adventures from New Haven to Martha’s Vinyard, usually with Jessie, our Golden Retriever. Mooncusser is best described as a “Resto-Mod”, as we have upgraded every aspect of it from the original design…
This portrait of Valiant is being shared by Bruce Greening. She was manufactured in 2003 by Pete Fish in Queensbury, NY as a 19-foot barrel back replica. Valiant first traveled to California, then in 2010 moved to Texas, then in 2013 was purchased by Kit & Bruce Greening, Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. In 2014, the steering wheel…
By Jim Schmidt The cutter rig sloop Aramis (original name Dorjack) was designed by Henry J. Gielow and built in 1935 by the Burbach Yacht Company in Fruitport, Michigan (near Muskegon). She is 38-feet long, 9 1/2’ wide and is constructed of one inch carvel planked mahogany over oak frames. Her 55-foot mast is made…
By Ed Bowles Her name is Last Cast and she’s a 22-foot wooden flat-bottomed dory built for beach launching and landing in the surf at Pacific City, Oregon. The dory fleet launches off the beach in the lee of Cape Kiwanda by backing into the surf with tilt trailers. It can be quite a bucking…
Mark and Karen Whitehead are seen cruising on Table Rock Lake, Missouri in their 1948 Chris Craft 19′ Racing Runabout named The Torpedo. The Torpedo is powered with a Hercules MBL with 158 hp. The Whiteheads are members of the Dixieland Chapter and Heartland Classics Chapter of ACBS. An ACBS member from Alabama,…
by Art Armstrong, Michigan chapter Molly-O has a direct connection to the descendants of Chris Smith as my grandfather, Milton Meier, was a friend of Owen Smith. In 1938 Owen asked him if he was interested in purchasing one if the seven 24-foot boats that were being built for family members. Apparently one of the…
Moonshine is a 1924 Great Lakes 26-foot Runabout. She has double cockpit seating. The original motor was a Packard Marine engine model IM268. It was replaced around 1960 with a Chris Craft Hercules MCL motor with 175 hp. The boat was brought to Harveys Lake by train in 1924 from the New York Boat Show…
By Rob Midyett, Dixieland chapter I’m not sure when I caught the antique boating bug. I had an uncle who owned a 1965 Chris Craft 17-foot ski boat. He was kind of a “shade tree” mechanic and he took great care of his boat. We would visit with my aunt and uncle each summer and…
This week’s Tuesday Tour of Classic Boats is led by a 1941 Chris-Craft 19-foot Custom Barrelback, The boat is owned by Rob Wilkinson, Pacific Northwest Chapter. Rob restored the boat is his carport over the past twenty-two years with a new bottom and a few planks here and there plus a thousand other projects, wiring,…
By Fritz Horton, Lake Champlain Chapter The Thistle Class sailing dinghy was designed in 1945 by Gordon (“Sandy”) Douglass to reach the post-war market yearning for inexpensive, high-performance one design boats. The design was patterned after then-current versions of the International 14 Class dinghies, in which Douglass had won a bronze medal in the ‘36…
by Dale Brevik, Big Sky chapter Candyman is my 26-foot triple cockpit barrel back that I built in the style of the 1940 Chris Craft. It took me three years to build and was launched on July 4th of 2012. I purchased the plans for the Glen-L Monte Carlo years ago and had been collecting…