Flawless beauty

POST FALLS — The Fastback Speedster could be confused for a piece of fine furniture, erroneously moored at a dock on the Spokane River. The powerboat’s mahogany hull gleams red-brown against the water, polished to a finish that captures reflections of clouds and waves. The seats are upholstered in a vibrant yellow.

But the Speedster’s beauty runs more than skin-deep.

Syd Young opens the hood to reveal a 550-horsepower, Viper V-10 engine. The boat was recently clocked at 57 mph.

“Perfection that floats,” Young says with satisfaction. “Every square inch is pretty.”

Sleekness and speed are hallmarks of Stan-Craft Boats, a Post Falls company owned by Young and his wife, Julie. The third-generation family firm builds wooden powerboats, priced at $100,000 and up.

Nostalgia is one of Stan-Craft’s selling points. Wooden boats are so entwined with customer Mark Hampton’s memories of Priest Lake in the 1940s and 50s that when he and his wife decided to buy a boat for water-skiing, nothing else would do.

“I just had a hard time buying a plastic boat,” said Hampton, a Yakima accountant. “I used to sit at the dock, and watch those big boats coming in on out. I really loved the wood.”

Hampton bough a 21-foot Stan-Craft he calls “the Dock Sinker.” The name is a joke between Hampton and Young.

“I told him, ‘Boy, when you pull in the dock, everyone’s going to run down to look at it,’” Hampton recalled. “Yep, it’s a dock sinker,” Young replied.

Stan-Craft is among a handful of U.S. companies that produce wooden powerboats, according to Jeff Stebbins, president of the New York-based Antique and Classic Boat Society. “I only know of a half-dozen,” he said.

Young’s dad, Stan, started the company on Montana’s Flathead Lake in 1933, when speedboats were a luxury reserved primarily for the wealthy. Over the years, the firm also built and repaired Fiberglas boats, which replaced wood in popularity by the late 1960s.

But classic wooden boats — evoking memories of lake cottages and lazy summer days — remained Syd Young’s first love. Each year, he designed and built a few.

In 1999, Young sold a marine storage and repair business to the Hagadone Corp., allowing him to devote more time to boat building. Now, six to eight Stan-Crafts glide out of his workshop every year.

Each is hand-built out of African mahogany, a wood prized for its durability as well as its beauty. Prices can range up to $400,000. The Fastback Speedster with the Viper engine retails for $225,000.

“It takes people with a lot of expendable cash to buy one,” Young said. “We think of them as works of art. You can’t ride around in the water in your Rembrandt, but you can have a lot of fun in our boats.”

An independent TV producer recently filmed a segment on Stan-Craft for a documentary on American boat builders. He was surprised at the amount of hand labor involved. Builders use hand chisels, sanders and planers, and each Stan-Craft takes about 1,000 hours to complete.

The work is so physically demanding that Young’s son-in-law, Robb Bloem, shed 30 pounds during his first year at Stan-Craft. “It’s hand planing and grinding for eight hours straight,” he said.

“It’s kind of a lost art,” added Tom Baldwin, Stan-Craft’s other builder. “Everyone wants to go back to the romance of wood, but very few companies build them.”

The wooden boat revival is deeply satisfying to Young. He and his wife took over the family business in 1971, after Stan-Craft had switched to Fiberglas boats, which were cheaper and faster to produce. “Just about every wooden boat builder was through,” Young said. “Nobody wanted wooden boats.”

The Youngs ran the Stan-Craft plant for about 10 years. After the recession of the late 1970s hit, however, the company struggled to sell even Fiberglas boats. Double-digit interest rates had killed the market for boat loans.

The couple closed the plant in Somers, Mont., in 1981, and eventually started over with a marine storage and repair shop in North Idaho. Young built wooden boats during the winter months.

He credits “On Golden Pond” for reviving interest in wooden powerboats. The family drama, which garnered Henry Fonda an Academy award in 1982, featured a Chris-Craft Sportsman and a lake cottage. Suddenly, wooden boats were in demand again.

“People said, ‘Oh my God, remember how much fun we had on our old Chris-Craft!’ I personally hold that movie responsible for the change,” Young said.

Young refers to Stan-Crafts as “new classics.” They’re better built and better designed than the wooden boats of the 1940s, he said. His favorite innovation is a deep “V” bow that flattens to a smooth bottom. It allows the boats, which average around 5,000 pounds, to power smoothly through rough swells. “It takes away a lot of the tricky habits, like hooking or listing or rolling,” he said.

At 60, Young is beginning to consider a part-time role with the company. His daughters, Amy Bloem and Sydney A. Young, help his wife with the financial end of the business. Baldwin and Robb Bloem have taken over the boat-building, and are starting to design Stan-Crafts as well.

All new prototypes must win Young’s approval, however.

“They’ve got to ride nice,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how pretty it is if you get roughed up when you take it out.”