Anyone with a passing acquaintance with the motorboat world knows that the sight and sound of a vintage Chris-Craft — those built in the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s — is pure majesty. All that mahogany, the unique styles of the windshields and deck horns, and the throaty rumble of the Ford or Chrysler engines are unlike any other spectacle on a body of water.
There’s a 1939 19-foot Chris-Craft Custom, one of only 390 built that year, and one of only 70 built with a one-piece cover board, that has called Grandview Lake home since 1995. Over the course of its life, both there and previously at Lake Hopatcong in New Jersey, it has been the vessel behind which generations of the Orben family have learned to water ski and in which many memorable cruises occurred. In addition, it has endured an engine fire and being sunk and has been restored twice.
Bob Orben, who, with his wife, Mary, currently owns it, remembers well when his father, Stanley, bought it in 1946. The Orbens had property on Hoptacong for years, and Bob grew up on it, in a house that his grandfather had modified from its previous function as a boathouse.
The family mainly used the Chris-Craft to tow its thistle sailboat to yacht club races on Hoptacong, as well as to get Bob’s parents to social galas presented by the yacht club.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
“My brother ‘borrowed’ it on occasion and patronized some of the bars in River Styx,” recalls Bob. “On one such occasion he plowed into the cement dock of a bar and did major damage to the cutwater [a steel plate folded in half around the point of the bow.]”
Orben recently recounted the boat’s history to a luncheon meeting of the Columbus PEO chapter. PEO is a national women’s education organization. He regaled those present with several other such stories.
One noteworthy feature of the 1939 Chris-Crafts was the art deco Bugatti windshield. Orben’s father had replaced it with a plastic wraparound windshield. When Bill Jacobs of Bristol Boat Works in Cincinnati performed the first restoration in 1994-95, he told Bob, “I’m not putting that windshield back on it.” Bill Jacobs was able to find an authentic Bugatti in a junkyard, and all was well.
When Stanley was considering selling the boat, Bob, who had long had property at Grandview Lake, made him a bargain, saying that he’d build a boathouse if his father would pass the boat down to the next generation of Orbens.
Even the April 1994 ride to tow it from New Jersey to the Midwest presented a harbinger of misadventures to come. At a fuel stop, a trailer wheel came off. In 2003, the engine caught fire in that Grandview boathouse. Before the fire was fully extinguished, all the wiring was burned.
On a Friday morning in 2015, just as Orben was leaving for his standing weekly men’s group meeting, he came upon a sight that would greatly complicate his day. The boat had sunk in place in the boathouse due to a bilge pump failure. He was able to attach a hoist to the front and pull it up. The seeping engine oil and transmission fluid had turned the upholstery gray.
“I called a friend, and we pumped and pumped,” he recalls. “Then we drove around the lake to get the water out of the carburetor.”
Motor Boat Garage of Cincinnati performed the second restoration in 2018. Three craftsmen in particular gave it their focused attention.
Now, says Orben, there are precautionary rules, such as taking one’s shoes off when riding in it, that are explained to passengers when boarding.
“The only risk is if you’re holding a cocktail and you hit a wave,” he says.
The regal spectacle of the Chris-Craft is a familiar sight to Grandview residents. It makes a regular appearance at the lake’s annual Fourth of July fireworks events.
Bob and Mary’s four children are scattered from Columbus to Cincinnati to Washington, D.C., to Denmark, so the boat’s future is not yet written. Still, the firmly established Orben legacy will be part of whatever its future may be.
It’s one of those pieces of family lore about which people say, “If only it could talk.” Fortunately, it is sufficiently well-loved that there’s much documentation of the travails and good times it has been through.
