Stewards of the Water The Payette Lakes Antique and Classic Boat Society Turns 20 By McKenzie Kraemer
Something is moving across Payette Lake that harkens back to the earlier days on the lake, nostalgia in tow. The lines are too clean. The wood too warm, too amber in the morning light. And the sound. Nothing else quite sounds like that. “It has no mufflers on it,” says one of the club’s longtime members, laughing. “It sounds like a Harley on water. People literally come out of the woodwork to see what the noise is all about.” He’s describing his 1947 Chris Craft Sportsman, a 22-foot utility with white-painted sides and a Chevy 350 under the hood. It boasts an eight-person capacity, enough presence on the water that he jokingly calls it “a cocktail barge.” But before it hit the water, he and a friend spent ten months taking it completely apart and putting it back together, working it to the standard of fine furniture, knowing every small imperfection because they were nose-to-wood with it for most of a year. “You are very much in touch with it,” he says. “You’re sanding and sanding endlessly, reapplying, putting wood together so there are no cracks. And then you put it in the water and start the engine and people just... stop.” Continued page 52 51