We bought Eloquent from John and Candace who live in
We bought it about 25
years ago. We
were relatively newly married and were hunting for a fishing boat and saw
an ad in the paper for a fishing boat at a garage sale. We went to look
but didn't see the boat when we got there. We were about to leave when
the
owner came over, so we asked and were told it was in a garage. We went to
the garage/shed expecting to see an aluminum fishing boat and there sat the
boat, up on a couple of benches, wood stripped down, engine in pieces and
no top deck. The boat was being sold as part of a divorce and we have no
idea how it came to be in NM. We offered to buy it for a bit lower price
than the owner was asking and she agreed. We went back a couple of days
later, put the boat on the trailer and then took a rake to the dirt floor
of the shed to make sure we got all the parts and pieces that had been
taken off the boat. It took us several years to get it all put together,
a
lot or research and some trial and error. The bottom has been
fiber-glassed since all the lake shores in NM are generally rocky and we
were concerned with wear and tear on the bottom. We rebuilt the original
engine and in our search for parts for the engine, came across an ad in the
local paper for two engines. They came out of a cabin cruiser
and are Crosley/Fageol engines as is the
original. They displace 53 cubic
inches as opposed to the original engine's 44 cubic inches. We bought
them
thinking to possibly put the larger supercharged engine into the
boat. Since most of the lakes we visit are above 7000 feet the smaller
engine had a hard time getting up any speed. The upholstery on the seats
had been removed and was missing when we bought the boat so we made our own
padded seats out of foam and canvas to fit over the wooden seats of the
boat. The windshield is not the original, it too
was gone when we bought
the boat so we put on one from Sears Roebuck. The top decking was also missing
and we
replaced it with marine grade mahogany plywood. The original engine has
been rebuilt as has one of the two larger displacement ones (the extra
engines came out of a cabin cruiser). We also replaced the trailer
that
was with it in the shed with a heavier duty one. We don't think that the
trailer that was with the boat when we bought it was the original trailer
that came with the boat when it was new.
As I said in my earlier message, there really is not a market for wooden
hull boats in NM. Most of the lakes have rocky shores with no docks and
maybe a smooth loading ramp but often that is also a rocky, pot-holed mess
too. Also, the small engine struggles to get the boat up to any speed
because most of our lakes are at high altitudes.
John and Candace with Eloquent