Boats As Art
by Susan Shinn

Pat Crusse is not politically correct. Nor he is very tactful, for that matter. But if you need a wooden boat restored, he’s the man you want. He demands and gets perfection. He and his staff produce floating works of art.

Crusse ’n Classics, his shop near Lake Norman, is a bit difficult to find. There’s no sign. He does no advertising. But a great many covered boats in the parking lot might tip you off.

“We learn every day,” Crusse says. “The quality of our work is uniquely different.” He adds, “I’m not a purist. They’re restored to be used and enjoyed.”
He also endeavors to make the boats as safe as possible. more >>

High Rock Boat & Ski Club
by Susan Shinn

If you’re looking for good friends, great food and good times on High Rock Lake, the place to be is the High Rock Boat & Ski Club.

Founded in the early 1980s, the restaurant has expanded numerous times over the years, ultimately housing event and dance facilities. It’s the headquarters of the Salisbury Shag Club.

The club is open from 6 p.m. until, Wednesday-Saturday year-round. Seating 250, there’s no event too large or too small for the club to accommodate, according to proprietor Curt Cloutier. more >>

Riding The Wave
by Chris Eller

With lakes getting busier and busier every year everyone is looking for something to do when there is no glass to be found on the lake. In order to accomplish this, skier and riders alike have moved the “ocean inland”, so to speak. If it is too rough to ski or ride you can try the latest new trend called “wakesurfing.”

As would be expected, a bigger boat will produce a bigger, easier-to-ride wave when weighted properly. However, I have even heard of people surfing with boats as small as MasterCraft’s 197 ski boat. The goal, whatever size boat you may be using, is to create a nice, curled wake with little or no white water at the top. You actually want to make it look like the breaking waves you see at the ocean and hold it right in that form. more >>

Lake Norman Watercraft Challenge

View Photo Album >>

About the cover: The 13th Annual Charlotte Antique & Class Boat Show is planned for Saturday, September 11 from 10 am until 4 pm. The show is held at Queens Landing off Hwy 150 in Mooresville NC. The boat on our cover is a 1973 26-foot Lyman Cruisette. Once berthed on Lake Norman, the Lyman is now owned by Mark White and plying Lake Lanier near Atlanta. Photo by Valerie Sherrington, www.photographybyvmae.com

Welcome aboard!

“Good friends, great food and good times” leads the introduction to the Susan Shinn feature on the high Rock Boat & Ski Club (see page 30). And it’s the good friends and good times that are characteristic of the Antique & Classic Boat Show that comes to Queens Landing on Lake Norman September 11 (see page 13). Isn’t it that way on all the lakes? Why else own a boat, after all?

When you own a boat, whether it’s the first one or another in a series, you, much as Kenneth Grahame’s Water Rat, feel “There is nothing half so much worth doing as mucking about in boats. In them or out of them, it doesn’t much matter.”

Pat Crusse is as much Water Rat as the rest of us. Only he’s made a career of “mucking about in boats” as you’ll learn, if you don’t already know Pat, from the “Boats as Art” feature that begins on page 9. Some of the boats you’ll see in the working display at the Antique & Classic show are the result of his efforts, as are the boats illustrating the feature.

But there are many ways to enjoy the water, especially this time of year. Just as Pat Crusse has a passion for boat restoration, Chris Eller has a passion for water sports … particularly skiing and boarding. Chris, along with his wife & partner, April, teaches skiing and boarding at their Coble Ski School in Lillington NC. He shares his knowledge with Pilot readers on a regular basis, this issue describing wakesurfing.

And there’s no one more passionate about what they do than Capt. Gus Gustafson. As a professional fishing guide, this PT Barnum of the lakes gives you some hints for loading up on white perch, the saltwater fish which has somehow managed to thrive in the fresh water of the lakes. The white perch has been so successful that there is currently no limit to your catch, with reports of hundreds boated in a fishing session. Learn more from Capt. Gus on page 89.

While you’re at it, take a look at Mike Marsh’s fishing forecasts (page 91) for all the lakes and make your next angling adventure successful.

When you think about your water-related interests, your water-related passion, take a look at the fun pictured on pages 44 and 56. But whatever your passion, enjoy the water and the extended season that seems to be in the making.

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See you on the water,

-Mike

Mike Aldridge
Publisher