My name is Joe Bonfiglio. I've been a tool-and-die maker in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for 37 years, so I know how to make a piece of steel do what I want. Wood, it turns out, has its own opinions.

This is the story of a boat I bought for $800 and spent three winters in my garage bringing back. She's a 1953 runabout, seventeen feet of mahogany, with a split windshield, two cockpits and a six-cylinder flathead inboard in between. I'm not going to say who built her. If you know old boats you'll know, and if you don't, it doesn't matter. She was built well, she was let go for twenty years, and now she's back on the water. I renamed her the Anne Marie, after my wife Anne, for reasons that will become clear.

The pictures are from my camera, which puts the date in the corner, so you can see how long all this took. Click any picture for a bigger one.

Saturday, October 12, 1996 — Found
There was a card on the bulletin board at the bait shop: OLD WOOD BOAT, MUST GO. A man was selling his late father's cottage on one of the little lakes west of town, and the boat had been sitting behind it under a tarp since about 1980. When I pulled the tarp back the wood was gray as a fence post, the varnish was long gone, the windshield was cracked, and there was moss growing in the deck seams. The trailer tires were flat and the trailer was rusted about halfway through. I said I'd think about it. Then I gave him $800 before somebody else could. Anne asked what I paid and I told her. She asked what it would cost to fix and I said "not much." This was my first mistake, but not my last.

Winter 1996-97 — Stripping the Bottom
We got her home on the old trailer at twenty miles an hour with the flashers on. Out came the engine, the seats, the windshield and every piece of hardware, into coffee cans on the shelf. Then my son Vincent, my friend Walter Newcomb from the shop, and I rolled the hull over onto padded sawhorses. I stripped the old bottom paint with a heat gun and scrapers, and then started pulling the bottom planks. Some came off in one piece. Some came off in a bucket. You can see the frames showing through near the stern, where the worst of it was. This picture is from February 15, 1997. The pile on the floor was the old bottom, and it was all firewood.

Winter 1997-98 — A New Bottom
I fished all summer and thought about it. When the weather turned I started on the new bottom: new mahogany planks, each one fitted, bedded and fastened with silicon bronze screws. Bronze screws by the thousand. I counted the first box and then I quit counting. Every screw hole gets drilled, countersunk and plugged, and in a tool-and-die shop we'd call that a lot of operations for one part. Some of the frames were soft and I added new ones alongside. In March 1998, with the bottom painted, Vincent, Walter and two neighbors came over and we rolled her right side up onto a cradle on wheels. That spring the engine went to a marine machine shop for a rebuild. No pictures of this winter, because the camera was in the house and I was in the garage.

Saturday, November 21, 1998 — Sanding
The third winter was all about the sides and the deck, and that meant sanding everything to bare wood. I went through sandpaper like a man goes through coffee. Anne came out to the garage and took this one. She says that look on my face is the look I had for three winters. The dust gets in everything. It was in my eyebrows, my coffee and, according to Anne, the living room.

December 1998 to April 1999 — Stain, Seams and 22 Coats
After sanding, a mahogany filler stain, wiped across the grain to fill it and bring up the color. Then white seam compound in the deck seams, the thin white lines between the planks that make an old runabout look like an old runabout. Then varnish. One coat, let it cure, sand it lightly, wipe it down, the next coat. I did 22 coats over four months. People ask why 22. Because 21 didn't look right, and I wasn't going to stop at 23 and spoil it.

Saturday, April 10, 1999 — The Last Coat
Coat number 22. The wheel and the dash were back in, the windshield and the deck hardware not yet. You can see the shop lights in the deck. I stood in the garage with the door open and looked at it for a long time. Anne came out with two cups of coffee and stood there with me and didn't say anything, which is the nicest thing she said all winter.

May 1999 — Engine, Chrome, Seats
The six came back from the machine shop rebuilt and painted, and went back in. The hardware went out to be rechromed and came back looking better than new. A shop in Racine did the seats in red, the way they would have been. New wiring, the gauges cleaned up, new tires and bearings on the trailer. By Memorial Day she was done except for the name on the transom, which I had lettered in gold. That's when I told Anne what the name was going to be. That's the "reasons that will become clear."

Saturday, June 19, 1999 — Launch Day
Lake Geneva, the public ramp, a little after eight in the morning. Walter backed my truck down, I stood in the water, and Vincent took the pictures. She slid off the trailer and floated, and I'll be honest, I had to look at the trees for a minute. A wooden boat that's been out of the water for twenty years leaks until the planks swell up tight, so we tied her to the dock for an hour and let her drink. Then the engine started on the second try, and Anne and I took her out.

What It Cost (Some of It)
Anne asked me to put this in. I kept receipts in a coffee can for the first year and then, well, there was a second coffee can somewhere.

Not counted: three winters of electric bills for the shop heater, the space heater I bought for the varnish, about a thousand cups of coffee, and Walter's beer.

My Mistakes, So You Don't Make Them

1. "Not much." Whatever you think it will cost, it won't be that.
2. Label the hardware. I put everything in coffee cans with no labels. I spent a whole Saturday in 1999 figuring out which cleat went where.
3. Don't pull too many planks at once. I had most of one side off at the same time and the hull started to lose its shape. Two or three at a time, then replace them.
4. Test the stain on scrap. My first stain came out too red on the wood and I sanded a whole side back off. That's the second stain on the cost table.
5. Varnish needs heat. The first coats went on in a cold garage in December and stayed soft and cloudy. I sanded them off and bought a heater. Keep the shop warm and give every coat its time.

Our First Summer
We trailer her over to Lake Geneva on Saturdays, about forty minutes, and go out in the evening when the water calms down. She lives in the garage the rest of the week, which is where this picture of the two of us is from, July 24, 1999. Walter was supposed to run alongside us that day in his pontoon boat and take a picture of us underway, and he forgot the camera on his kitchen table. So this is the picture we have, Anne in her boat scarf, waving at nobody. We'll get the underway one next summer.

Here's what I didn't expect. Everywhere we go on that lake, people wave. Old fellows on the piers stand up and wave. At the gas dock a man in his eighties told me his father had one just like her, and he stood there with his hand on the deck for five minutes and didn't say another word. You don't get that with a fiberglass boat.

Anne calls her "my boat" now. I let her. For three winters she put up with sawdust in the house, varnish fumes, a husband who came in from the garage at midnight, and a living room full of coffee cans, and she never once told me to quit. That's why the name on the back is hers.