At The Georgetown Wooden Boat Show

10-13-2025 - I completed turning my shed into a shop, built a prototype boat, found the trailer to sell with my boats, got my business cards and banner, and built and float tested my first production version. It is a WPB-12-3-PP model and serial number 001. It is 12 feet long, 3 feet wide and propelled using either push poles and/ or paddles, thus the model number. It’s now heading for the Georgetown Wooden Boat Show (https://woodenboatshow.com/) in Georgetown, South Carolina on October 17th, 18th and 19th. The boat is in the category for “Owner Designed and Owner Built”. I will be posting more pictures from the show.

This is what the boat looks like from the outside.

This is what the inside looks like with everything stowed.

09/17/2025 - We arrived at the boat show about 7am, found our spot and began setting up. We weren’t the first one there and others were already busy setting up. There was a steady in flow of boats, sellers, and displays from 7am until about 915. We were the last display on the right side of the street with a race boat directly across from us. After we (my 10 year old grandson and myself) got our boat setup, we went and looked around and took pictures before the crowds were admitted. There were three city blocks of boats, sellers, tents and displays and covered both sides of the road. There were also the city docks just behind us that had boats displayed in the water. These were mostly the bigger boats (cabin cruisers and such) with a few smaller vessels thrown in. We toured the dock area, the streets and returned to our boat for judging.

Our display was between two other show veterans, the team that won our category (Owner Designed and Owner Built) has been coming to the show for 19 years and have won most of the awards through those years. I wasn’t upset that we didn’t win, our boat was about the only one that didn’t sparkle and shine almost every boat there was a leisure boat, even the kayaks next to my boat were so polished that you could see yourself in them. They were very pretty.

After the judging, the crowds started to arrive. There was a steady stream all day. My grandson proved that our boat is very durable, he spent the day walking back and forth on it, jumping up and down, pulling the seats out and back in, pulling the paddles out and using them to pass out our cards like a Vegas Dealer. The boat took the punishment very well.

There were a lot of folks that stopped to talk about the boat, many knew what the boat was but haven’t seen one in years, others were interested in what kind of boat it was and what it was used for. I think that I will put together a punt boat history page and the uses for this style swamp punt boat.

09-18-2025 - When we went up to the show on Friday, I put the seats, paddles and push poles in the truck to make sure that all was good for the show on Saturday. On our way back, I left the seats, paddles, and push poles stowed in the boat and drove the 350 miles back home over some pretty rough SC roads and at interstate speeds. The boat and all accessories road back perfectly. The last two photos are of the boat after arriving home.