Last week son and I went to the Tulsa Boat Show and we saw all sorts of brand new boats all shiny and new with all the gizmos. My favorite was a wooden boat built in 1955, the Chris-Craft Cobra. I think wooden boats are beautiful.

This one actually has a wooden hull with a fiberglass engine cover with a big fin at the back and sure looks sporty. Plus the cockpit has a car style steering wheel. It is really not good for anything besides zipping around lakes at high speed. It has a top speed of 55 mph which is plenty fast.

Only 106 of these boats were ever made, all in one year so they are highly collectible. “Man of the World” says the Cobra is “…a breathtaking fusion of prewar wooden handcraft and postwar American modernism.” Check out the link, it has great pictures of the boat in the water.

The old wooden speed boat just have a certain soul and warmth to them. Any boat though is a pain in the you know what to maintain and I suspect wooden boats are that in spades. But you know, it would be worth it to be styling, right? I can just see pulling that thing up to the yacht club to go have cocktails.

Remember the movie “On Golden Pond“? They had a Chris-Craft wooden boat in it, a 1950’s model. Below is video with one of the boats used in the movie.

The old joke that boat owners trade with each other is “The two happiest days of my life were the day I bought my boat and the day that I sold my boat.” I used to own a fishing boat when I lived near Houston. I loved it but I sure didn’t mind selling it when the time came either. What about you? Do you own a boat or used to?