Upcoming Appearances and Awards
Where 007 Will be This Year:
If you feel that you are still "lost in the 60's", you will LOVE this year's Concours event at Lake Tahoe! Fins, lots of turquoise and orange paint, and maybe even some shag carpet will adorn the "Boats of the 1960's" on display at Obexer's Boat Company.
And although 007 is not a boat of the 1960's, her rakish gold dorsal fin and black faux crocodile upholstery should fit right in!
So, come see us at the show; I promise to start up the engine so you can hear all that Hemi horsepower accompanied by 50's Gold music!
Awards:
2022 was a very special year for Chris Craft boats at the Tahoe Concours. After a layoff from live shows due the COVID epidemic, the Tahoe Concours was back with a great line-up of Chris Craft boats, celebrating the marque's 100th anniversary.
007 had just finished a two year restoration during COVID, so expectations were high! 007 did not disappoint as she won:
First Place in Marque Class
"There is Nothing Else Like It" Overall Award
-from California Porsche Dealers
Although it is always satisfying to win a class award knowing that the judging at the Tahoe Concours is very tough and done by a set of experts in each boat category, the second award 007 won might be even more satisfying. Who would appreciate excellent design and engineering more than a group of Porsche dealers?
Judging at the Tahoe Concours is Notoriously Stringent
As we mentioned above, Judging at the Tahoe Concours is notoriously difficult. The standard is "as delivered from the factory", and the judges seem to know the "correct" size and location of every single screw on every boat. Scores are determined on a 0 to 100 point scale, and as far as I know, there has NEVER been a 100 point boat (Nadia Comaneci has not arrived in the Tahoe boat judging world!).
The judging problem for 007 is that the boat was owned, and modified for racing, by one of the most famous families, the Henry J. Kaiser Sr family, in Tahoe history. To undo the modifications put in place by the Kaisers would be, in effect, erasing history, and the current owners refuse to do that.
To give you some idea what that means, we have shown below the official judging worksheets from the 2022 Tahoe Concours, where 007 earned a First Place trophy with a score of 93.5 points (out of 100 points). Keep in mind that all the work on 007 was done by well-recognized restoration experts and advised by THE recognized expert in Cobra boats. Still, because of the owners' decision to keep the historical aspects of 007 intact, the boat was only able to score a 93.5. The deductions for historical changes made by the Kaiser Family include: Line 32 (1.0 points), Line 42 (0.25 points), Line 93 (3.0 points), Line 114 (0.5 points), totaling a deduction of 4.75 points.
What this means is that this historical boat begins the competition at a ceiling of 95.25 points, NOT 100 points as do her competitors. In a competition where mere tenths of point are often the difference between winning and losing, a 4.75 point hurdle is simply insurmountable. Since 007 scored 93.5 points in total, she was only 1.75 points from perfect not considering the Kaiser historical alterations, normally close enough to be in competition for overall Best of Show consideration.
The owners of 007 are happy to live with this ceiling on Concours scoring, because the historical provenance is much more important for this particular boat than taking it back to simple "showroom standards", but this does expose an important flaw in the current Concours judging protocol that needs to be addressed in order to lure more historic boats into Concours shows for the public to enjoy.
