SHORELINES

11 Shor e l i n e S | 2016 Vol :4 "Every time we put ours in the water, someone wants to buy it," says Dudley Weber. He found the Betty Mae I, a 1948 Chris-Craft runabout, decaying behind a building he bought in Trussville. His father, Bill Weber, now 85, spent more than a dozen years, on and off, restoring it. "At one point my wife said, 'I sure will be glad when this affair with Betty Mae is over,'" he says. "I replaced the whole bottom and the top deck. It had a newer Chevy V-8. I took that out and put in a Hercules engine, a flathead four used in Army jeeps. After the war Chris-Craft bought a bunch of them and converted them into marine engines." The original 6-volt electrical system, with its cloth- sheathed wiring, gave way to a modern 12-volt one, with retro-style new gauges and electric ignition. "Other than that, I put it back as close to the original as I could," Bill says. His painstaking work won a Best of Show award at the annual Lake Guntersville Antique and Classic Boat Show. As we watch Dudley launch the Betty Mae I at Trident Marina on Smith Lake, a friend observes, "She gets prettier every year." "Just like me," quips Bill. The heyday of wooden motorboats began in the Roaring Twenties, when they set speed records and matched the rakish style of the time. It declined from the mid-60s on, as the market shifted from wood to fiberglass. While other historic boatbuilders such as Hacker, Gar Wood, Century, Riva and Lyman are also prized, Chris-Craft is the best known. From the 1920s on, the Michigan-based company became the largest maker of mahogany powerboats. It thrived in part by taking manufacturing, marketing and design cues from Detroit's carmakers. It introduced a full line of new models every year, from small runabouts to large cruisers, launched with splashy ads and boat-show debuts. They were made with assembly-line production methods as well as skilled craftsmanship. And, especially after World War II, they echoed car-design elements such as instrumentation, steering wheels, upholstery and even tail fins. Like any watercraft, vintage wooden boats require upkeep and, if not maintained, daunting sums to repair or restore them. "But you can get one for a fraction of the price of a new boat," says Steve Ambrose of Cutwater Marine Services in Alexander City. "I'd rather spend $30,000 on a classic wooden boat than $100,000 on a wakeboard boat. It may need some work. But there are ways of improving on the original design without detracting from it." Old wooden boats can be leaky, especially if they've been out of the water. "But even single-plank hulls are pretty watertight once the planks swell up in the water," Ambrose says. "If the bilge pump's coming on every so often, it's probably got the original hull – but that's what bilge pumps are for." The preferred fix is what's called a 5200 bottom, using flexible 3M 5200 – both a sealant and an adhesive – to bind hull planking to underlying marine plywood, all secured with bronze screws. That's what Weber did with the Betty Mae I and what Drew Edge hired Birmingham's "YOU CAN GET ONE FOR A FRACTION OF THE PRICE OF A NEW BOAT. I'D RATHER SPEND $30,000 ON A CL ASSIC WOODEN BOAT THAN $100,000 ON A WAKEBOARD BOAT." – S T E V E A M B R O S E O F C U T W A T E R M A R I N E S E R V I C E S I N A L E X A N D E R C I T Y O N W O O D E N P O W E R B O A T S .

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