Member Spotlight - Pat and Susan Oven


It seems like yesterday but it was almost forty years ago now that I first became interested in wooden boats. Two senior high school age brothers from our lake neighborhood in northeastern Minnesota set out to build a kit boat. Progress came at a snails pace. We thought it would never get finished, that their Dad would never again have a garage in which to park his car. The project lasted four years.

In my mind, it was yesterday. I still vividly recall the evening that the neighborhood came to watch the inaugural launch. The boat floated. The motor purred. It was gorgeous. Everybody cheered. I decided then that someday I would own a wooden boat.

Fast forward through a few decades to our home on White Bear Lake where BayBe, a 1947 18 foot Chris Craft Deluxe Utility with a K engine has spent its last five summers. The name came from the previous owner. We don’t know its significance. We chose not to change it. The hull card noted that it was shipped from Algonac, Michigan, to the Minnetonka Boat Works on March 6, 1947. It has likely spent its entire boat life in Minnesota.

Susan, our son Reid, and I had talked about getting a woody someday. There always seemed to be two stipulations – I had to get rid of something else; I had to wait until I retired, an event which is yet somewhere in the future.

A number of years ago we were on vacation in Harbor Springs on Lake Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay. There were a dozen Chris Crafts, Centurys and a Ditchburn in their slips at one of the marinas. Not long after returning home we went down to Treasure Island for the annual Rendezvous. That did it. We had been sailors for a long time. The sailboat would stay but it was time for the
pontoon boat to move on to a new home.

I started looking and found our Chris Craft in the St. Paul paper. We went to see it. It was at the right price point, seemed to be in reasonably good condition and appeared to present enough of a restoration challenge to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. There was an additional side benefit. I would be able to tell people that the boat was older than I was, but not as old as my wife. (This observation has not been used as freely as I had originally envisioned). The owner brought the boat to White Bear for a test run and the rest is history.

During its first winter White Bear Boat Works tended to the bottom. Jack Dukes of Crow’s Nest Marine fixed some minor engine problems. Subsequent engine care has been at the hands of Dan West of Dockside Mobile Marine in White Bear. With my limited knowledge of wooden boats at that time I took on refinishing the decks and the hull. I assumed that it would be both fun and easy taking out the blisters, doing a little sanding, staining, varnishing and redoing the deck seams. After the winter months of weekend work it looked good to me, especially from a distance. Experts would refer to the results as “amateur.”

I wish that I knew then what I know now, but life doesn’t work that way. It’s been a work-in-progress. The indoor-outdoor carpeting was replaced with a period vinyl covering. The boat cover was modified to become a full waterline cover. It also spends its summer on a lift that has a cover so it is now totally protected from the sun and weather. I’ve again refinished the hull. Much improved results this time around. The decks are next.

We bought the boat to use it and enjoy it, and we certainly have accomplished both. Our most rewarding time was a cruise around the lake with our 88-year-old neighbor. She said that the engine sound and boat smells took her back to her childhood and the two Chris Crafts that her Father had owned. This past summer BayBe was fortunate to be included in two significant events, delivering newlyweds to their wedding reception and in being featured in the opening video sequence of boat-lake cottages for a documentary on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his days in the White Bear Lake and St. Paul areas.