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| Arlon Hibbert |
| 1947 16’ Gar Wood EnsignHull No. 10446
Danenberg Boatworks Forum member since May 18, 2006 |
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The beginning started on March 4, 1947 when the boat, the 468th of 675 Ensigns built, along with a sister boat, were shipped to Kesler Motors, a Chrysler car and Garwood boat dealership in Blackfoot, Idaho. The boat was kept by Clark Kesler and the sister boat was sold to his brother-in-law. These are pictures of the boat taken in 1947.
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For me, it all started in late May of 1973. I was driving thru a small town close to my home and I saw an old wooden boat sitting by a service station. I was a mechanic for a farmer out in the country and I went to Blackfoot to get parts often, so I drove by this boat quite a few times. Finally, I stopped and inquired about the boat. I had known the owner for years, who purchased the Gar Wood 4 years earlier, and would sell it for $300, with the trailer. It was in poor shape with gaps between the planks, no windshield, a small hole in the side, and it may have sunk at one time. But, he said the engine had been rebuilt 2 years ago and ran well. I wrote a check on June 13, 1973 and pulled it home.
I had two teenage sons and a teenage daughter who were excited about the boat. The boys each gave me $100, so now we were partners. I had space in the shop where I worked, so in our spare time we took the engine out, flipped it up-side-down, cleaned and sanded the hull, and repaired several places. Then we applied fiber glass cloth and painted it white with a red bottom. We got it in the water and started having fun. It was under powered at our 4,500 ft altitude, but we still had fun. That Christmas, I gave my share of the boat (I had paid for all the repairs) to my sons. They used it hard thru 1977, it developed zip cracks in the fiberglass along every plank joint and started leaking. It got worse each year and they installed two bilge pumps. In the spring of 1978, they bought their own boat and gave the Gar Wood back to me. One day during the summer of 1978, I took my daughter and her girlfriends water skiing. After the picnic, which lasted too long, the boat had water above the floor boards. The bilge pumps had failed! The girls started bailing water and I removed the seats to reduce weight. Then I got it started and slowly the self bailer removed the water. We took it home and I put it in the shed, and there it sat for 28 years.
It never saw the light of day again until February of 2006.
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The restoratiion took 2 years, 6 months and 2 days. A total of 1674 hours, of which 145 were spent on the engine and 88 on the trailer. The boat is named “THE OTHER WOMAN.” Why “THE OTHER WOMAN”, you ask? My dear wife teased me at one point, and said I was spending more time with the boat than I was with her. Since a boat is a girl, I had my name.
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