South Tahoe Antique Wooden Boat Classic

Welcome to Fabulous Lake Tahoe, your local's guide to the very best of America's year-round playground. I'm Jack Durst, and I'm here at the Tahoe Keys marina for the 5th annual South Lake Tahoe wooden boat classic. This is the 5th time that South Lake Tahoe has done what is rapidly becoming an annual tradition here in Tahoe: the wooden boat show. From the 1920s to the 1970s it was very popular to make speedboats out of wood, and now that the technology has kinda gone out of style we are having a nostalgia for it again. This is the Hot August Nights of boats! It's kind of an expensive ticket, it's a $20 ticket and I usually wouldn't go cover the wooden boat show but I got such a strong response out of my Google+ audience that I thought I would come out and cover it for y'all [boat motor roars] Hi, I'm John Walti with the California speedboat association. I'm the vice-commodore this year. We're here this year at the Tahoe ACBS classic and antique boat show, and California Speedboat is part of the show this year for the second time. We've brought our race boats for display. This right here is the trophy that was created the same year the club was organized in 1934. It's the Dr. Barron trophy. This was given every year at the annual regatta at Lake Meritt, CA. Racing ceased on Lake Meritt in 1987 or thereabouts, but we've got every winner on this trophy from 1934 on. Some notables are Dan Arena and Dan Foster, they were club members and their sons are here at the show. Our club was incorporated in 1936 having been formed first in 1934. Of note: Henery and Edgar Kaiser were members, Lou Fageol of the bus line twin coach was a member, Stan Sayers was a member, the Murphys were members and industrialists in the San Fransisco Bay Area. Quite a rich history to our club that began in 1934 and we're just out here to share it with everybody. [Jazz music playing] My name is Ed Scott, and my wife Deborah and I own "Baby Skipalong" which is a 1924 Gold Cup racer. It actually won the gold cup in 1926 and 1927. The boat was then moved up here in 1929 by my great uncle who sold it to Stan Dollar, and he raced it at Tahoe. It's one of the winningest race boats on Tahoe. The trophy that I have here is from the 1930s and it's the Tahoe Powerboat Club annual championship trophy. It has from 1931 all the way through 1940, of which Baby Skipalong won 4 of the races and the Dollars won 2 more in addition to that. Baby Skipalong is in the show, we're happy to have it here. It has a 621 Packard engine in it. And we hope that everyone will enjoy seeing this boat plus all the other wonderfull boats up here. [Jazz music playing] Hi, I'm Gary Jesh here at the Tahoe Boat Show, sitting along side the Thunderbird, a beautiful yacht owned by George Whittell, Jr. and I'm here on behalf of the Thunderbird preservation society. We're enjoying a great afternoon with a lot of interesting people coming by. You know, this boat has been on Lake Tahoe for 70 years now, 72 years. It was actually launched in 1940 by George Whittell Jr. himself! and it's a special thing for me today because in 1962 my dad Ray Jesh was working for Bill Harrah and Bill Harrah bought this boat from Whittell and restored it. So my brothers and I were up at the Thunderbird Lodge for 5 summers in a row, and that's what we were doing: getting this boat restored and ready, and look at the beautiful condition that it's in here. That was our skipper Dave Marion who just walked by. So today, this morning, for the first time in 37 years I got a chance to ride this boat once again, and it was just incredible! I can't tell you how beautiful it was with the memories of those years ago plus the new ones I made today coming all the way from the Thunderbird Lodge down by Sand Harbor, NV down here to the south shore at 20 knots. It was just a great morning and I know I'll never forget it. I really enjoyed it! So I'm glad to see all you folks here checking us out, and be sure to look us up at Thunderbird Lodge. [Jazz Music Playing] Hi, my name is Scott Quartz, and I'm here with the California speedboat association, and I'm here at the ACBS antique and classic wooden boat show in Tahoe, CA and I've brought my boat here today: a replica of a 1938 Ventnor gold cup boat. I had an idea a long while ago to bring forward one of these designs and enjoy it on the water; and I started looking and just couldn't find one - they're just not around. So, I worked with a boat builder on the east coast and a bunch of other very talented individuals and put this boat together that we debuted this year. A good friend of mine, Micheal Johnson of the California speedboat association, and I worked very aggressively over the last several months to bring it all together so that we could show it and demonstrate it today at Tahoe. The boat was originally made, as I said, in 1938. It followed on a design that was concieved in '37 and built for the Chinese. These boats were designed to carry a 500Lbs bomb in the bow, and as a consequence of all that weight in the bow of the boat it would wallow in the corners. So the engineers at Ventnor decided to put these things called sponsons on the front. The sponsons serve to lift the boat and to stabilize it, and in doing so not only did it stabilize the boat but it reduced the wetted surface area and the boat took right off. It went upwards of 85MPH. So, after 12 of the 13 boats were shipped, one was left back at the factory and a gentleman by the name of Ruthorford discovered it and went on to race it with wild success. Salman Simmons decided that he wanted a boat like that and he had a boat like this built (A full size version, mine's a replica at roughly 80% scale.) and he went on in 38 I believe, no in 1939, to win the gold cup. It was powered with a V-16 Allison and was wildly fast. And so this boat here is a take off of those, as I said, at 80% scale. It has a 502 Chevvy with about 530 horsepower, and it'll probably run in that same 70-80 mile per hour range, and we're looking forward to working the tweaks out and enjoying it on Tahoe a little later this week. [Jazz Music Playing] John with CSA again. This is another one of our famous boats. This is the K-9 "A Better Idea." It's a racing craft. It was designed and built by Rudy Ramos, the famous boat designer and builder of the 50's and 60's. Rudy was famous for building the ski model racing runabouts, also known as S-K racing runabouts. This was a marathon boat. It was called "a better idea" because he introduced a V-bottom to this boat, which helped it to plow through the rougher water much better. He also devised the wind deflector, which helps the pilot go 120MPH without being buffetted by wind the entire race. This boat is quite famous: It's first race ever it won the Orange Bowl regatta. It's won the Salton Sea marathon races, Clear Lake, Barryessa, quite famous marathon boat. As you can see it's supercharged, and this is now known as a K racing runabout. But today, K racing runabouts are largely flat bottomed design and since this is a V they call it K-M for K Marathon boat. And still today you can see K-marathons, also known as Grand Nationals or GMs racing at Parker, Arizona. It's a pretty spectacular class. If you do some searching on "Grand National" you can see some wild racing. But this is a racing watercraft and it's a quite famous boat. [Jazz music Playing] OK, Hi, I'm Steve Wilke and my wife Kelly and I own this boat. It's called Shanty II and it was built in 1958 by Bill Wagner who was a famous owner of race boats back in the day. We found it underneath a tree and it came thus: we saved the boat. And so, this boat is famous for never having been famous! It never won a race, it was never even in a race. It was un unsuccessfull attempt at a new idea and it cost them a lot of money to figure out but it never raced so now it's just a show boat. [Jazz music playing] Hi, my name is Mike Johnson and I'm the owner and builder of the "B-52 Stingere." It's a reproduction of a B racing runabout from the early 50s through 1971-72. They were a hotly contested monohull class with high performance engines. They were allowed to hop them up quite a bit and this is one of the only representatives of that class. There's only one other boat in the area that's left that represents this class and that's "Little B". It's a national record holder and so on, it's a great little boat, but it's not able to get out and about. So I thought I'd do a reproduction and at least show people what the boat was about, how big it is and how it was constructed. And it's been getting good reviews from a lot of people who really enjoy it. The young people, especially teenagers and so on... Oh! They just love it! But, it's a real fun boat to drive. It gets pretty busy after 60 miles per hour and I'm definitely getting older and need a younger driver to drive it and really let it run. But it's a lot of fun at 60. It took me a little over a year to build it from a lot of leftover racing parts and stuff, and it's a scratch build: trailer, boat, and everything. So I've been busy with that, and I have some future projects that I have scheduled for the next year. I'm going to do a Pacific One Design, it's called. It's a 2-seat, 14ft runabout with a flat head V-8 60. It was a racing class, a beginning racing class in the 1950s. And again, the plans for that boat are available at Speed and Spray magazine. You can find it on YouTube or on the internet, and they still offer the original plans. Pacific One is a one design, that's what that stands for, and you had to meet all of the hull specifications. It's a stepped monohull. But that's only a 50-60MPH boat and it's plenty safe for us old guys and it's a real pretty boat, too, in all mahogany. But right now it's fun showing this boat and getting around getting a lot of response from the young people. [Jazz music Playing] Hi, I'm Joan Allbright with the Tahoe Resource Conservation District, and we're here with the watercraft inspection program at the wooden boat classic here in the Tahoe Keys. I'm out here trying to educate boaters about the importance of being cleaned, drained, and dried to help prevent the spread of acquatic invasive species such as this guy right here, which is the Quagga mussel. Classic boats do have some special challenges because the wooden boats typically have water within them at all times because they need that water to float. So, making sure that you're using hose water to keep them clean and making sure that you can dry all other areas prior to launching in new water bodies is going to be the best way to prevent the spread of acquatic invasive species. [Jazz music playing, applause] So, stay tuned to Fabulous Lake Tahoe: there's gonna be a concert report coming out around the 1st of the month. There's gonna be a video of the Tahoe Show bodybuilding competition a little bit later on in the month, and much, much more. So, stay tuned to Fabulous Lake Tahoe. Thumbs-up if you enjoyed this video. Thank you, and keep Tahoe blue. Bye.