This is the final post in the series about our visit to see our friends Kelley and Mark in Truckee, CA, a wrap up from our cruise on Lake Tahoe. On our final day in the area, Kelley had arranged with a friend a tour of the lake on his boat. By stroke of good fortune, we got caught in an endless series of road construction projects and were late. And in another stroke of good fortune, Dan, the boat's owner and captain, thought that the water might be too low at our original pick-up point in Tahoe Vista, so Plan B was for us to meet at the Gar Woods pier in Carnelian Bay, further west. In getting there, we encountered still more road delays, ultimately arriving much closer to noon than to our original 11am departure time.
This delay that would typically have been annoying and frustrating was actually wonderfully and serendipitously fortuitous. Just as we boarded Dan's boat at the end of the long pier, we heard an unusual noise that sounded like a brief toot on a steam whistle. I looked up to find where the noise had originated only to see a gorgeous mahogany boat coming quite slowly and serenely in our direction on the glassy lake.
Until that point, I never connected the name Gar Woods with the pre-World War II manufacturer of mahogany boats, Garfield Wood, several of whose boats I have seen on Seneca Lake at Watkins Glen, NY. I also never connected being at Lake Tahoe with seeing more gorgeous watercraft of the wooden boat era. I should have connected Tahoe as the playground of the ultra-wealthy with wooden boats, but I didn't. In any case, I did lay my eyes on three beautiful watercraft despite it being very late season when most of the boats are in storage for the winter.
Thunderbird
As the 55-foot gleaming mahogany and polished stainless steel Thunderbird passed us, I swear I gawked open-mouthed fanboy-style while furiously snapping photos with one hand while giving the crew high signs with the other. I could feel the twin 1100-horsepower Allison V-12 aircraft engines (think P-38 and P-51) intensely rumbling as she crept alongside us, the crew all wearing headsets.
The Thunderbird was bringing a group of passengers to dine at Gar Woods restaurant, no relation to the Gar Wood boat manufacturer, rather in homage. Reportedly, it takes $5000 an hour with a two-hour minimum to arrive for lunch in such style aboard this legendary yacht. Unaffordable for Ann and me, but we owe great thanks to those folks whose bank account allowed us to see this phenomenal craft up close!
The arguably most famous and most admired wooden boat in the world and valued at about 5.5 million dollars, the Thunderbird is docked at the boathouse at Thunderbird Lodge on the east side of the lake in what is now the Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park. Commissioned by PG&E heir George Whittell in 1936 and then sold to and rebuilt by casino magnate Bill Harrah in 1962, The Thunderbird is now owned by a non-profit, the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society.
Wild Goose II
Sapphire
Because of a road construction project right in front of the Gar Woods pier, Mark could not park his truck roadside and had to find a spot off a side road a couple hundred yards away. After we had debarked and said goodbye to Dan, we walked back to the truck. Quite unexpectedly, a guy was towing the Sapphire into storage with an aircraft tractor. As she sat on the side of the street, we walked by the gleaming 1998 Hacker-Craft 24-foot wood epoxy craft.
Before reading up on these fantastic boats that we had the opportunity to see firsthand, I did not realize that wooden boats are a huge thing at Tahoe. The lake is home to the annual Lake Tahoe Concours d’Elegance, arguably the most acclaimed and prestigious wooden boat show in North America. That would be something to see.
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