The boat has the original 6v electrical system, a refurbished fuel tank and all chrome hardware is in excellent condition. The boat was refurbished in 2015 with a rebuilt 95hp Model K Hercules engine along with a new fiberglass bottom, new pigskin color upholstery, sides refastened with new stain and varnish on all wood. The boat was built using the finest Philippine mahogany and the graceful lines have made the “Barrel Back” a much-desired Chris Craft model for generations of wooden boat enthusiasts. Commonly referred to as a “Barrel Back” because the boat’s semi-circle transom looks like a floating barrel in the water when viewed from the stern. Chris Craft Deluxe Runabout, delivered to Seattle Washington in July of 1940., Chris Craft built only 425 17ft. The fond memories of water skiing behind wooden boats on Lake Geneva a couple of generations ago won’t leave him.Ĭontact writer H.1940 17ft. Maybe so, but fewer than 100 wooden speedboats are made annually in the U.S., Northius estimates, putting Grand Craft in the most obscure of boating categories. I think he can get Grand Craft back to a pace of 20 to 25 boat sales a year before long, which would be better than what we did at our peak in the 1980s.” “Patrick is a fantastic marketer,” Northuis says. Today, at 73, he has accompanied Gallagher on some of his recent sales forays. Stephen Northuis founded Grand Craft in 1979 in Holland, Mich. He had a message: Wooden boats, built in a flexible material, are actually smoother on the water, absorbing waves and bumps in a way that a hard fiber material cannot. “I was looking for potential customers who had high-end fiberglass boats but were ready to try something different,” Gallagher says. Gallagher approached the owners of megayachts in need of smaller runabouts to put into ocean ports. Celebrities such as Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez and Tim Allen have owned Grand Craft boats. The last significant renaissance in wooden boats was sparked more than 40 years ago with the release of the Henry Fonda-Katharine Hepburn film “On Golden Pond.” This time, Gallagher put his marketing experience to work, hitting the road to reach out to high-net-worth boat owners at country clubs and select marinas in places like Palm Beach and Sea Island and Walloon Lake. Competition now is slim, coming from little Hacker-Craft and GarWood, both based in upstate New York. The last big maker of wooden boats, Chris-Craft, stopped making them more than 50 years ago to concentrate on fiberglass. In boating, he adds, the retro look is becoming popular again. But people are tired of that, complaining they all look like the same minivan,” Gallagher says. “The industry has been dominated for years by white fiberglass boats. He’s projecting sales of nine boats and $6 million in 2023. Gallagher figures to build five boats this year and reap at least $3 million in sales. Patrick’s wife, Rose, a lawyer who formerly worked at Chapman & Cutler in Chicago, joined on as co-owner and administrator. The timing was good: Experienced carpenters who were laid off from millwork firms around northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin were ready to learn how to fashion African mahogany into the hulls of Grand Crafts boats, which range from $350,000 apiece to $1 million. Next, new boat designers and workers were recruited to sign on. into extending him state tax credits to move to a new 25,000-square-foot headquarters plant in Genoa City, Wis., just across the Illinois state line. Then he talked the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. In late 2020, Gallagher persuaded the owner of struggling Grand Craft Boats in Holland, Mich., reduced to making just a single boat a year, to sell him the business. What’s more, Gallagher didn’t know anything about making boats.īut he’s a sharp salesman. But there were plenty of obstacles: Wooden boats today represent far less than 1% of all boats made in America, and there were just a few makers left in the country. It would be fun to make those again, he believed, as he sold out his share of the family business for a seven-figure sum to relatives. Gallagher had fond memories of boating on Lake Geneva as a teenager in his family’s classic old wooden runabout. I needed something totally different.”ĭifferent is what he got. “The challenge at my old job wasn’t there anymore. “It occurred to me that I needed a radical change,” Gallagher says. Most didn’t like the concept, and so it was a tough sell. His specialty at Gallagher was selling counties and municipalities on the advantage of recycling old road materials. He had been at the company for two decades, induced to join after getting a master’s degree in marketing from Northwestern University’s Medill School and working in advertising for employers such as J.
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