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No sicker, it seems, than many of the other boat owners present at last summer’s Concours. Ulrich Briner originally found his toylike 18-foot 1936 John Faul runabout in a shed on Switzerland’s Lake Zurich. Octogenarian Al Schinnerer spent ten years restoring his one-of-a-kind 27-foot 1940 Chris-Craft, which features custom-dyed emerald-green leather upholstery in its triple-cockpit interior. Four generations of the Bay Area–based Shepherd family have cruised Lake Tahoe in Dork, a 1948 Chris-Craft whose signature is its turquoise-and-white paint job. Dork is the only boat that’s been at every Tahoe Concours. “One year the propeller-shaft seals let go the night before the show, and the Dork sank,” explains 44-year-old Bill Shepherd III, who inherited the boat from his grandfather. “We still managed to show it.”
At the Tahoe Concours, success is measured by how closely a boat resembles its original form, and Emma II still had room for improvement. Back in 1992, Peterson hired specialists to give her new upholstery, wiring, varnish (dozens of coats—a modern improvement that the judges look past), and fresh chroming, right down to the boat’s smallest screws. Before the 2007 contest, Peterson had his entry freshened with more new uphol-stery, a rebuilt motor, and reworked side planks that had been gingerly pulled, smoothed, and reinstalled. At the show, the boat was immaculate. The blue, six-cylinder engine was as clean as a surgeon’s scalpel.
“It was a small job—only a few hundred hours,” Peterson says. That’s compared with the work he’s put into Steinway, which has included a search for a rare etched-glass light globe and a trip to the Midwest for the sole purpose of photographing similar boats.
But the 2007 Concours judges were rough on Peterson. Among other things, Emma II was penalized for her new leather interior (which had been an option for the 1949 Chris-Craft but was not delivered on this boat), a paint chip on the steering-wheel column, and an errant wire coming out of the distributor. But the killer penalty came from the vent atop the craft’s bow hatch. The judges believed it to be an add-on, which ultimately dropped Peterson from first place to second.
“Look at all the boats here,” said a resolute Peterson, scanning the marina moments before the judging ended and the celebratory rumble of marine engines drowned out the jazz band. “How in the world do you know every single detail on all these entries?”
Months later, I follow up with Peterson and am reminded exactly why he’s so successful at the Tahoe Concours. Certain of his renovation work, he had further researched the origins of Emma II’s bow vent. The judges, he discovered, had relied on a photo from the 1949 Chris-Craft catalog that showed Peterson’s model without a vent. But the image was of a 1948 boat. “The first year for the vent was 1949,” he says triumphantly. “Emma II was given a first place.”
What will Peterson do for an encore this coming August, when his ’29 Hacker Craft seems poised to do well in the tough 1920s boat class? “I’m not going to have Steinway judged. It’s a pain in the ***,” he grumbles. But then he softens: “Well, never say never.”
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