Hooked, Line and Sinkered...

[gregsobczak]

Well,I have decided to post the progress on my boat as I really enjoy reading about others in the club who have taken the plunge into "woodiedom". Last May (2011) I bought this '63 Constellation out of Ault Boatworks as he was shutting down the business in Mount Clemens Michigan..not far from where it all started in Algonac. As you can see in the pictures she had been sitting uncovered for 3 years and was a dirty mess. Ault and some other yard rats said they were certain she would run..and float, I was very skeptical but I bought her anyhow. The interesting part was she had to be out of the yard by July first and really the only way to do it at a reasonable cost was float her and tow her or run her down the Clinton River to a slip...I hadn't yet secured.Luckily my younger son had just graduated high school and had some free time...

I will start the photo's with "pre-purchase" and continue my story from there..
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[RRGadow]

Nice project....I look forward to photos of your progress.

[gregsobczak]

So, now that I was the proud owner, the mission became get her ready to float. I have restored some houses, some cars..owned a glass boat for 11 years, this was my point of reference for this project. One of the yard rats at Aults made a suggestion that I search "boat buzz" on the internet and I would find a wealth of info about old Chris Crafts. That was a great piece of advice that has helped along the way. OK, here is what I did next. I decided that I would tackle from the rub rails on down, look for any big trouble...fix, float and then tackle mechanicals. I did make the decision that I would attempt to restore/use instead of an all out restoration on the hard. The bones seemed good enough.You can see in the pictures that we made some patches, replaced one plank below the waterline and gave her a paint job, although she was a blue and white combo out of the Holland factory, the burgundy and white of a previous owner was going to stay the color choice.

[jfrprops]

Great project, do keep posting about it.
thanks for saving a classic
John in Va.

[gregsobczak]

Thanks,the "thanks for saving one" has been a very common theme from people that see her, more to come later..

[gregsobczak]

So, On the last Friday in June after the cosmetic work was complete, she was trailered to the crane and lifted into the water. There was some fuel in the tanks, I added fresh fuel..approximately 25 gallons per side,new oil, plugs, points, cap and rotor, fuel and oil filters and one new battery. I had cranked her over just slightly on land just to know the engines would turn...and they did. The one thing that gave me some comfort when I bought her was all the block/manifold/water pump plugs were on the galley counter so I had some confidence it had been winterized 3 years before.So, while she was sitting in the slings soaking up...I proceeded to fire her up, with some really minor starting fluid help...she fired up and within minutes we had her running on her own. The pictures in this post are her maiden voyage 2 days after "splashdown" as we called it.

[jfrprops]

Looks great, know that was an exciting time!
What is the length of that boat?

John in Va.

[gregsobczak]

She is a '34 Constellation built in Holland Michigan and delivered to Colony Chris Craft in Algonac. I am pretty sure the bridge was added later but the bridge was an option in 63.

[evansjw44]

The bridge was installed by the delivering dealer. They were shipped strapped to the foredeck.