About two years ago, Tammy and I rescued a dusty, beat-up, motor-less, nearly 60-year old mahogany motorboat from an old farmer’s tobacco barn here in North Carolina. We set out to restore it to as “like new” condition as we could, with dual hopes of re-creating a boat that would provide fun on the water and turn a head or two along the way. Our restoration is finally complete, we truly had a blast doing it, and we enjoyed our maiden cruise a couple weekends ago. The finished boat exceeded our expectations, and each of you helped us along the way. Regardless of how or how much you were involved, we simply couldn’t have done it without you, and we want to take this opportunity to say THANKS!! Those contributions are acknowledged below. In addition, we hope you’ll enjoy the attachment, whose photos chronicle the project from beginning to end.
Our sincere thanks to:
Howard Johnson of Old Time World and the Whirlwind Boat Center – whose decades of expertise in boat restoration and willingness to patiently guide us with hundreds of carefully written emails, through every detail of our restoration project are exceeded in value only by his love of Whirlwind boats and his passion for preserving (and helping others preserve) as many of them as possible. He also provided our replacement windshield and some missing deck hardware. Thanks to wife Cheryl for her hospitality when we visited their home and saw some of their many Whirlwind restorations, and Their American Memories Museum with 80 fabulous boats and 40, `50’s era cars on display. We were searching for an answer to the question “do we really think we can restore a motorboat?”
Roy Harvey
Tom Holt
Steve McCulloch, and Jason Horner
Howard Smith
Mike Pugh
Jim Wade
Barry Ferrari
Jeff Martinson
Jim Diesfeld
Juan Matamoros
Lauren and Kristen Harvey, Matt Bowling
Be the first to comment