Story & photos by Dave Hemenway
The Finger Lakes Boating Museum occupies the former Taylor Wine Company facility in Hammondsport, NY.
The Finger Lakes Boating Museum (FLBM) was established in 1997 “for the education and preservation of the boating activities and boat building heritage of the Finger Lakes.” FLBM held various events around the Finger Lakes area while looking for a permanent home, which it found in the former Taylor Wine Company campus in Hammondsport, New York in 2013.
The Taylor Wine Company was the largest wine business in the Finger Lakes region and the largest employer in Hammondsport, on Keuka Lake, until it was subsumed by a variety of corporations and eventually folded. The history of this fabled wine company is ably told by Thomas Pellechia in his book Over a Barrel: The Rise and Fall of New York’s Taylor Wine Company, which was published by The State University of New York Press in 2015. The demise of the company’s wine producing facility left a huge hole in Hammondsport until the Finger Lakes Boating Museum acquired the fourteen-acre site in 2014. It has turned an abandoned, forlorn plant into a dynamic campus with nineteen buildings which showcases the Finger Lakes’ rich maritime heritage.
This beautifully restored runabout exemplifies the region’s many boatbuilders.
This Classic Lightning is among the first Lightnings built by the Skaneateles Boats Company.
I visited the FLBM this spring when I attended the annual Classic Lightning Regatta at the Keuka Yacht Club, which is just outside of Hammondsport. Their welcoming dinner was hosted by the Finger Lakes Boating Museum on a Friday evening when they opened the entire facility to the sixty participating Lightning sailors. We enjoyed an excellent dinner and an unhurried stroll through the large collection of boats and equipment.
The Lightning sailors enjoyed seeing one of the first Lightnings. The Skaneateles Boats Company, a Finger Lakes company, commissioned the young team of Rod and Olin Stephens to design a 19-foot sailboat that would be appropriate to this area. S&S designed the Lightning in the late 1930s, and the Skaneateles Boats Company produced most of the first three hundred boats. The FLBM has the original molds that were used to build these boats, as well as a perfectly restored Lightning of this era.
The museum has a wide-ranging collection of boats that were built in the Finger Lakes region. These range from an 8-foot Penn Yan dinghy to runabouts, sailboats, and larger powerboats built for lake use. These include everything from personal high performance speedboats to ferries that serviced the lake communities.
The museum also has an interesting collection of engines and fishing gear from the past. These exhibits can be seen closeup and without distraction from large crowds of people. I particularly liked the fish house exhibit, which showed how small fishing businesses thrived as anglers from all over the world traveled to the region to fish for their famous lake trout.
I didn’t realize that there were several engine manufacturers in this area. The museum has a vast collection of these machines, which were a marvel in their time and a thing of beauty for our time.
Vintage canoe exhibit
The Finger Lakes are sizable bodies of water, and craft like this commuter boat were a great way for a privileged few to travel upon them.
The fish house exhibit recalls an era when sportsmen from around the world flocked to the Finger Lakes in search of monster lake trout.
The FLBM has extensive workshop areas that are used to both rebuild their boats and to teach people how to work on their own boats. The Classic Lightning group has an annual spring workshop at the museum dedicated to working on wooden Lightnings. This year’s workshop was dedicated to recanvassing Lightning decks in the traditional manner and building a mast raising system that improves the ease of stepping a Lightning mast. Other workshops, for example repairing two-cycle outboard motors, are routinely held at the museum. The museum has a fleet of boats that can take you on a tour of Keuka Lake from their dock.
The FLBM is a member of the Museum for All initiative, which allows members of one museum to visit other museums at a reduced cost. This allows other museum members to visit the FLBM for $3 – a significant reduction from the regular fee of $12. The museum’s website is flbm.org and it has a strong Facebook presence. I encourage you to visit this enjoyable and comprehensive museum if you are in New York’s Finger Lakes region, a beautiful, rural part of the state. ■
Dave Hemenway lives in Eastern Connecticut and sails out of Thames Yacht Club in New London. He’s been sailing and messing about in boats for his whole life and has recreationally sailed Finns on and off since the 1970s. His primary cruising boat is a Dickerson 36 yawl that he has maintained and improved for 35 years. Since his retirement from higher education, he has worked at Cappy’s Boat Shop where he reports to his dog, Cappy.
