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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Putting a classic back to work

When Ludlow’s “water taxi” was crushed in a storm, local craftsmen got busy

Jodi Summit
Posted 4/26/23

TOWER- Restoring wooden boats is not a “copy and paste” job. Every boat has a history, and every boat tells its own story.Jeff Larson and Dana Hein, who operate Sunrise River Boatworks in …

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Putting a classic back to work

When Ludlow’s “water taxi” was crushed in a storm, local craftsmen got busy

Posted

TOWER- Restoring wooden boats is not a “copy and paste” job. Every boat has a history, and every boat tells its own story.
Jeff Larson and Dana Hein, who operate Sunrise River Boatworks in Tower, have plenty of stories to tell about the boats they restore, and this winter’s newest project is no exception.
The staff at Ludlow’s Island Resort, located on a five-acre island on the Cook end of Lake Vermilion, has some unique challenges in serving their guests, specifically getting them to and from the water access-only resort.
Their 20-foot-long utility boat, which is about 60 years old, serves a unique role, as the resort’s “water taxi.”
“It’s rare to see a classic wooden boat being used as a work boat,” said Hein. “The boat can haul a lot of guests comfortably,” said Larson. “And it’s easy enough to operate that it can be driven by resort staff.” Powered by a single 60 hp Suzuki outboard, it’s an unusual configuration for a boat of its size. “This boat has a lot of soul,” Larson said.
But the boat was badly damaged in a severe storm last year when the boathouse that serves as its summer home was totally destroyed by a probable tornado that ripped through the resort on June 20.
Most of the boathouse, along with the neighboring structure, was carried away by the strong wind, but the rest of the structure, including many large beams, collapsed on top of the water taxi.
The boat was an integral part of the resort and resort’s guests experience.
“On a busy summer day that boat goes back and forth to shore 10 times each hour,” said resort owner Paul Ludlow. “Think of it like our elevator. It is constantly going.” The trip from the shore to the island is a short one, about 200 yards, and drivers take the trip slowly, so they can talk with the guests on board.
Ludlow said that Dana and Jeff were “shocked when they saw the boat’s frame was intact.” The resort initially figured they would need to replace the boat, so quickly had purchased another similar one to put into service.
The storm blew through around 9 p.m., when the resort was at 100-percent occupancy, Ludlow said. He was home at the time with his wife Kelly, about five miles away on Niles Bay, where they experienced some wind but nothing like the wind that roared through Ludlow’s Island as well as two other nearby resorts, Muskego Point and Polley’s, all of which sustained significant damage.
As soon as Ludlow got the call, he quickly boated back to the resort.
“We had to replace 14 of our 23 cabins’ roofs,” he said, “and other roofs needed smaller repairs.” The storm destroyed both boathouses and many docks.
“Every one of our guests said the same thing,” Ludlow said. “It lasted less than 10 seconds and sounded like a locomotive going through.” Thankfully, no one was injured. Most resort guests were inside their cabins when the storm blew through.
Damage at Ludlow’s was limited to the south side of the five-acre island. The north side, only a couple hundred feet away, emerged without so much as a downed tree. While it was not officially called a tornado, Ludlow said the insurance adjusters said this type of damage is caused by “tornadic action.”
A lot of the debris ended up on the east side of the island. One large white pine had a long 2x4 piece of lumber embedded in the trunk. “You could do pullups on it,” Ludlow said. The insurance adjuster explained this can happened when the tornado-force winds twist the tree trunk, opening up the fibers, letting an airborne object work itself in.
A lot of the missing debris was never accounted for. A 20’x50’ cedar-planked sundeck on top of one of the boathouses totally disappeared.
“No one found any of those cedar boards,” he said.
Rebuilding the classic
Ludlow said that the first sign the boat could be repaired was the fact it was still floating.
But there was still a lot of work to do to get the boat back into action.
Larson and Hein rebuilt the wooden-framed glass windshield, put in new mahogany decking, rebuilt the motor well, repaired the rope crash rails, and gave the boat a new coat of paint and varnish. The boat will be back in action before the fishing opener in May, assuming the ice is off the lake.
The boat was purchased by the resort in 2004 and put into service in 2006, replacing an older wooden shuttle boat that had simply been worked to the bone and was beyond repair.
“The boat was in very good shape when we got it,” Ludlow said. “We just modified it to be a shuttle.”
“It was a special model, a Cruiser [offshoot from the Thompson wooden boat company, now owned by Chris-Craft], called a picnic boat. It came with a table that could pop up in the middle and a built-in cooler.”
The boat undergoes a lot of wear and tear each year. “Every year we repaint and revarnish it,” Ludlow said. He said he doesn’t know of any other resort using a classic wooden boat to ferry guests.
“It’s such an important piece of our resort experience,” he said. “People will be wowed this year when they see it.” The resort is looking to have another busy summer, and over three-quarters of their guests are repeat customers.
Ludlow said they will be taking extra good care of the boat now. Normally they let a wide assortment of staff drive it, but this year, he joked, maybe he would just take on the role.
He admitted that wooden boats do require a lot more maintenance, but said the resort’s history included many wooden boats, and they intended to keep that tradition going.
“We have a lot of classic boats in our fleet,” he said. “They look good parked at our docks.”
The Ludlow family currently owns four other classic wooden boats, some of which have been displayed at the annual classic boat show, on Labor Day weekend at The Landing.