Late Theodore Hanmer 14 foot guideboat

This little-used boat in excellent varnish comes from the Ausable Club, where boats are very well kept and carefully used. Look closely at these photos and you will see very little sign of wear, although there is a bit or repaired planking. This boat is shorter and lighter than the usual full-length guideboat (4 rather than 16 feet) and doesn't have the usual kickplates. It has only one set of straps (rowlocks) and so would be rowed in one direction from the middle seat and the other from the bow seat when there is a passenger.

Based on its provenance and condition this would in today's market be a $10,000 guideboat but because of its non-standard characteristics I'm offering it at $8000. This is very much a buyer's market. I have sold one guide-boat a year recently, at prices that are very low considering the extraordinary antiques we're talking about and the far higher cost of a replacement or reproduction guideboat.

1906 Grant Guideboat

This boat was the next to last to come from Grant's shop in his lifetime and never has needed to be repaired or restored. It is virtually original. As such I think it is probably the best and most valuable guideboat I am ever likely to sell or any customer is likely to find. It is watertight and fully usable as it is, and if it were mine I would only carefully sand and paint it, with perhaps one or two other slight repairs. It comes with the characteristic "rack" or set of floorboards of an Adirondack League Club guideboat. The initials stamped into the bow stem-cap, I.A.P., are those of Ira Place, a member of the Club, the original buyer. The 7 on the inside of the yoke cleat indicates that it is boat #7 from 1906, as shown on the tally-boards from the Dwight Grant shop. The original primer is visible at worn areas of the interior paint. The middle seat with its different form of caning may be from an earlier Grant boat, and there is no stern seat-back. (I have made a jig just like Grant's and Parson's for bending the characteristic bow for such a seatback and could make you one.) A small triangle of wood is missing from one of the oar blades, easily replaced.

I am trying to hold out for $15,000 for this boat, considering it absurd that a brand new replacement would cost about $23,000. However well done -- and there are very good craftsmen ready to do it -- it could hardly be made of such fine-grained pine and cannot have any antique value or aura. I recently saw an example of this point, a very fine copy of this same model of Grant, fully evolved, but of garishly coarse-grained pine, which did not sell at the price of $10,000. The buyer of this guideboat will have an investment likely to appreciate.

Modern Guideboat

This is a 10 year-old, virtually unused guideboat built by an admired contemporary builder, Joe Rector, and for sale at less than half the price of most new guideboats. More pictures are available.

"Mystery" Guideboat

I call this the mystery guideboat because although it is by a sure hand, we don't know the builder. Even the famed Dr. Sulavik, a man who has studied more guideboats than anyone else has, and has particularly studied the identifying signs of each builder, doesn't know the builder of this one. But it is a solid workmanlike guideboat in workboat finish and ready to go, needing no restoration. This is an unusual thing to be able to say of a boat offered for only $8000.

 

Bolger Micro

This is a Bolger Micro, a trailer-sailer with a shallow ballast keel, which gives the boat great stability and leaves the cuddy completely clear of obstruction. I acquired this boat nearly new but without its spars, sails, or keel, without some of its flotation, and with a companionway and hatch not according to plan. I have built the keel, with 420 lbs of lead in it, made a new hatch and slide, put in the flotation, provided spars, and had Douglas Fowler make new sails.

Moreover, I put a drop-axle on the trailer, lowering the trailer frame a full 8", so now this boat launches and retrieves as easily and shallowly as the centerboard and leeboard Bolger sailboats I have had. It floats on and off the trailer just before my car's rear wheels touch the water. These boats have been built all over the world. The sailing shot below is of a Micro sailing in South Australia. The shot of my daughter cutting up an apple in the cabin is meant to suggest how roomy the cabin is, with sitting headroom for tall people on two long wide berths, ample space between, and no obstructions. Boat comes with an 8-horse Honda 4-stroke running perfectly. I think this is a good deal at $7000, about half what it would cost to build one and finish and equip it as well. But I have found that the market thinks otherwise. Your problem, if you want this boat, is this: It's certainly going to cost you more than $5000, and how much more will depend on the state of my affections, and those of my family. If you will take it to St. John, USVI (where it would be a blast), and make it available to me for 10 days each April, $4000.