A Paradox

Birding/nature has been very dull lately, so I have to resort to other things to talk about. (Paul C. needs something to read anyway!)

An old boat always has a story to tell. This story is of my boat, an 18’ 6” cedar hull built in Wallaceburg by George Vandenbossche. The actual year is really unknown, but it was built sometime in the late 1940’s. Vandenbossche built wooden boats in Gravenhurst, then moved to Wallaceburg and started a business in the 1940’s at the present day location of Tom and Al’s Furniture.

My father and I got the antique boat bug in the early 1980’s when Dad purchased a 21’ Mac-Craft from Allan Myers. That boat sat on Baseline Road for a few years and Dad had his eye on it since he knew the history behind the locally-built and owned boat.

While we were restoring the Mac-Craft at home, a friend of ours stopped by one day with a buddy. His buddy was in the dock and seawall business, and he has recently repaired a boathouse at Mooretown with an old woodie in it. His eyes perked up seeing the Mac-Craft label, because he remembered that the woodie in the boathouse had Mac-Craft step-plates. Dad was interested, and contacted the owner for an appointment to go and look at it in Mooretown.

The man in Mooretown knew the history behind the boat that he had owned it since the 1950’s. It was always in or near Sarnia, and had apparently been used by the Miss Supertest raceboat driver Bob Hayward at some point. Earlier history is unknown.

Upside down behind Abbott's in Sarnia

Years went by under the assumption that it was a genuine Mac-Craft boat. Dad had occasional contact with the owner, and found out that one winter, the boat fell from the chains onto the ice. In the spring they brought it out of the water and parked it behind Abbott Boats in Sarnia. The engine and hardware were removed and the hull turned upside down. It sat there for a few years under the intention that it would be fixed up someday. At one point, Dad got word from a nephew of the owner, Robert Mathers, the boat was for sale.

Dad offered $500.00 for the boat and arranged to have Larry Abbott bring it to The Boat Doctor, where I worked at the time. I had never seen the boat at all, and anyone in their right mind would have walked away from it! There was missing hardware and windshield, holes in the bottom, cracked planks and missing seats and engine box, not to mention no finish whatsoever on the wood. It came with engine, but it was a Ford flathead V-8--a really oddball engine!

Arrival April 1997

The first thing I noticed was that it was a cedar hull, and batten-planked bottom. To my knowledge, Mac-Craft never made such a boat so I had my doubts. But time went on, and I worked on it in my spare time over a period of four years.

One day while taking the dash panel off, I noticed some pencil marking on the backside. It was barely legible, but I made out the name George Vandenbossche. Now things were making sense to me! I had seen a photo of one of Vandenbossche’s boats, and it was remarkably similar to our boat. From that day forward, there was no doubt in my mind that this was a Van-Craft. How the boat inherited Mac-Craft step-plates is a complete mystery!

As the fourth year approached, I had not accomplished much on the boat. If this project was to be completed, I had to make a serious and concerted effort. I arranged to work on it during shop time with Dan Benn to get this thing in the water by July 2001.

At some point, I had picked up a Model M Chris Craft motor from Rob Johnston and this was going to power the boat. I was not going use that old marinized stock car motor! I advertised the old Ford flathead and quickly sold it for $250.00! A number of problems with the M motor just before launch really got me frustrated, but eventually we worked them out.

I decided on the name Paradocks, a play on the word paradox, since the boat was a bit of an enigma in the beginning.

We launched the boat on July 5, 2001. The boat did not take actually take on any water through the hull seams, but someone (?) forgot to put the packing in the shaft packing nut! A minor detail...

The boat ran well and gave my Dad many years of enjoyment. The only problem we ever had was the following year when the condenser burned out in the distributor causing Dad to be stranded just out from the entrance to the Snye.

In the summer of 2009 I planned to do some work early in the season, but was not able to get around to it until late summer for various reasons. It ran rough, and we determined that the valves required some work. John Lewis kindly reworked the top end of the motor and got it running better than it ever had before. Later in the summer, I replaced two bottom planks and changed the propeller for more acceptable RPM.

The boat had come a long way from its arrival back in Wallaceburg in early April 1997. It is a fast and good riding boat—well worth the grueling effort of restoration to preserve a part of Wallaceburg’s boat history.