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 fifth annual South Lake Tahoe Wooden Boat Classic. This is the fifth 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 the technology has kind of 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 wouldn't usually go cover the wooden boat show, but I got such a strong response out of my Google Plus audience that I thought I would come out and cover it for y'all. Hi, I'm John Walty 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 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 Merritt. Racing ceased on Lake Merritt in about 1987 or thereabouts, but we've got every winner on this from 1934 on. Some notables are Dan Arena and Danny Foster. They were club members. Their sons are here at the show. Our club was incorporated in 1936, having been formed first in 1934. Of note, Henry and Edgar Kaiser were members. Lou Fongio of the bus line, Twin Coach, was a member. Stan Sayers was a member. The Murphys were a member, industrialists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Quite a rich history to our club that began in 1934 and we're just out here to share it with everybody. My name is Ed Scott and my wife and I, Debra, own Baby Skip Along, 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 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 that has from 1931 all the way through 1940, of which Baby Skip Along won four of the races and the Dollars won two more in addition to that. Baby Skip Along is in the show. We're happy to have it. It has a 621 Packard engine in it and we hope that everybody will enjoy seeing this boat plus all the other wonderful boats up here. Hi, I'm Gary Jesch here at the Tahoe Boat Show sitting alongside the Thunderbird 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 Jesch 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 five summers in a row and that's what we were doing is 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. The memories of those years ago plus the new ones that I made today coming all the way from Thunderbird Lodge down by Sand Harbor down here to South Shore at 20 knots. It was just a great morning and I know I'll never forget it. Really enjoyed it. So glad to see all you folks here checking us out and be sure to look us up at Thunderbird Lodge. Hi my name's Scott Quartz. I'm with the California Speedboat Association and I'm here at the ACBS antique and classic wooden boat show in Tahoe, California and I brought my boat here today a replica of a 1938 Vintner 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 started looking and just couldn't find them. 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 Michael 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 they say in 1938. It followed on a design that was conceived in 37 and built for the Chinese. These boats were designed to carry a 500 pound 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 Vintner decided to put these things called sponsons on the front. The sponsons served to lift the boat 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 to 85 miles an hour. So after 12 of the 13 boats were shipped one was left back at the factory and a gentleman by the name of Rutherford discovered it went on to race it with wild success. Zalman Simmons decided that he wanted a boat like that and he had a boat like this a full-size version. Mine's a roughly 80 percent scale built and that boat went on in 38 I believe no 39 to win the gold cup. It was powered with a v16 allison and was wildly fast and so this boat here take off of those like say an 80 scale percent scale has a 502 chevy about a 530 horsepower and it'll probably run in that same 70 to 80 mile an hour range and we're looking forward to working the tweaks out and enjoying it here at Tahoe a little later this week. It's a racing craft it was designed and built by Rudy Ramos the famous boat designer and builder of the 50s and 60s. Rudy was famous for building the ski model racing runabouts also known as SK racing runabouts. This was a marathon boat it was called a better idea because they introduced a v-bottom to this which helped to plow through the rougher water much better. He also devised the wind deflector which is helps the guy you know at 120 miles an hour not have all that be buffeted by wind the entire race. This boat's quite famous its first race ever it won the orange bowl regatta. It's won the salt and sea marathon races, Clear Lake, Berryessa, quite famous marathon boat. As you can see it's a supercharged and this is now known as a k racing runabout but today k racing runabouts are largely flat bottom designs and since this is a v they call it km for k marathon boat and still today you can see k marathons also known as grand nationals or gm's racing at park arizona pretty spectacular class you can do some searching on grand national you can see some wild racing but this is a racing craft and it's a quite famous boat. Okay hi i'm steve wilkie and my wife and i kelly own this boat it's called shanty 2 it was built in 1958 by bill wagner who was a famous owner of race boats back in the day and we found it underneath a tree and uh we come this we saved the boat and so it's famous because it was never famous it never won a race it never was even in a race it was an unsuccessful attempt at a new idea and uh cost them a lot of money to figure it out but it never raced so now it's just a showboat hi my name is mike johnson i'm the owner and builder of the b52 stingery it's a reproduction of a b racing runabout from the early 50s through 71 72 they were a hotly contested monohull class 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 the class that's a little b 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 you know that what the boat was about and how it how big it is how it's constructed and it's been getting good reviews so a lot of people really enjoy it the young people especially teenagers and so on they oh they just love it you know but it's a real fun boat to drive it gets pretty busy after 60 miles an hour and i'm definitely getting older and need a younger driver to drive it and really let it run but it's it's a lot of but it took me a little over a year to build it a lot of leftover racing parts and stuff and it's a scratch build trailer boat everything so i've been busy with that and i have some future projects that are scheduled to for the next year i'm going to do a pacific one design it's called and it's a two seat 14 foot runabout with a flathead v8 60 and it was a racing class beginning racing class in 1950s and again the plans for that boat are available at speed and spray magazine it's an old you can find it on youtube or in on the internet and they still offer the original plans and pacific one it's a one design is what that stands for and you had to meet all the hull specifications and it's a stepped monohull but that's only a 50 60 mile an hour boat and it's plenty safe for us old guys and it's a real pretty boat too and all mahogany but right now it's fun showing this boat and getting around getting a lot of response from the young people hi i'm jonelle bright with the tahoe resource conservation district we're here with the at the wooden boat classic here in the tahoe keys i'm out here trying to educate boaters about the importance of being clean drain and dry to help prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species such as this guy right here which is the quagga mussel classic boats do have some special challenges as the wooden boats typically have water within them 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 a new air and new water bodies is going to be the best way to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species so stay tuned to fabulous like tahoe there's going to be a concert report on the first of the month there's going to be a video of the tahoe show bodybuilding competition a little bit later on the month and much much more so stay tuned to fabulous like tahoe thumbs up if you enjoyed the video thank you and keep tahoe blue bye