BIG BOAT — A 45-foot boat built in Red Bluff carried a multitude and only took on about eight inches of water, said Larry Lucas, a Red Bluff man trying to track down the boat his father, Pat Lucas, built in 1949.
Larry Lucas is on a hunt. During his youth, the Red Bluff man remembers cleaning and caring for a 45-foot tour boat his father built in 1949.
"I'd like to show it to my son and daughter and grandkids," Lucas said.
Having lost track of the boat, Lucas said he heard a rumor of such a boat in a barn somewhere in Anderson.
His father, Pat Lucas, built several boats, but this one was special, Lucas said.
The boat was made in the style of the U.S. mail boats that navigated the Rogue River in Oregon, Lucas said. There was a groove in the boat bottom that, when a chain was stepped on, raised the propellar and drive shaft up into the groove and flush with the bottom of the boat. This feature kept the machinery safe in shallow water.
After serving as a tour boat in the 1950s, it was featured in a national travel magazine, Sunset. Lucas's father sold it to a man named Bill Garrett in 1955, who in turn sold the boat to someone else.
"He sold the boat to someone who wanted to put it on Shasta Lake, but it never got there," Lucas said.
To contact Lucas about the boat, call 526-3800.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
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