Boat museum shows off new donations stored in Meredith

MEREDITH — The New Hampshire Boat Museum’s collection has grown with the help of Dr. Dwight Stowell, of Lake Sunapee.

Six of his donated wooden vessels, all around 90 years old, were on display Thursday at Dick Letendre’s storage room in Meredith, near the Winnipesaukee Playhouse. Letendre has agreed to keep the classic boats warm and safe over the winter while the Wolfeboro boat museum works on creating a larger facility on Wolfeboro’s Back Bay.

Groundbreaking for the new museum could begin as soon as next spring, Jaime Laurent, a museum officer, said at the reception. Fundraising is continuing.

Stowell said he feels a special affection for one of the donated boats, the "Rippowan," a 1929, 26-foot Luder, a launch purchased by his uncle Donald Walton in 1937. Stowell took over the boat in 1966 while in high school and ran it commercially for four years as a passenger carrier.

“We live on an island in Lake Sunapee, Great Island, and my mother said when I was six months old, she put me in a laundry basket and brought me out to the island in the Rippowan, which is the family boat.”

It was a premier boat for Luder, but it never caught on.

“The problem was, it is too grandmotherly,” he said. “This is the last launch that they did. It has a displacement hull as opposed to a planing hull.”

Stowell estimates he has owned more than 100 boats in his lifetime. He likes the old wooden classic boats. For him, they evoke a simpler time when he and his family would spend lazy days on Great Island, swimming, fishing and just spending time outdoors. He said he also feels a calling to preserve a type of boat and a way of life that is quickly disappearing.

He’s also quite fond of the "Miss Abigail," a 1939, 25-foot custom Chris-Craft. It was a special order by Charles Haddock, president of the Hupmobile Corporation and was delivered to Lake Sunapee on a flatbed truck by James Irwin Sr., who was one of Stowell’s close friends.

Twenty years ago, Stowell bought the "Revenge," another of the donated boats. It is a 1933 twin engine, convertible Chris-Craft. The boat was one of two ordered by Walter P. Chrysler, president of the Chrysler Corporation for his vice president John Keller. It was restored in Windsor, Ontario, in the 1990s.

“Probably the premier Chris-Craft of 1933,” Stowell said. “If you go inside you can see it has twin engines with twin throttles on the wheel. It’s a magnificent boat.

“It was probably as deluxe as Chris-Craft got. It had the wonderful soft top. The problem was always getting the engines coordinated. It was a little bit of a problem navigating it.”

Another boat was the "Gray Rock II," a 1930, 24-foot Chris-Craft Landau, with an 8-cylinder, 140 horsepower engine. He traded three paintings with William Morgan of Lake George in 1989 to acquire it.

Also on display was the "Ildrim", a 1929 Chris-Craft custom closed cabin sedan with a limousine top and a V-8 engine, and a 22-foot 1927 Yacht Tender with a custom fitted top.

He explained his reasons for the donation.

“I’m going to be 76,” he said. “I always thought I was going to do a museum. And then I said, you know, things are happening so fast in the world now I think I want to jump on and get this wonderful institution off and running.”