WOW!

That’s all we can say, really. Our 2012 BTWBS was a tremendous success! Despite crummy weather, more than forty boats were on the bayouside at Parc sur la Teche last weekend, coming in from as far away as Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. See photos above under “2012 Show.” Thank you all SO much for visiting with us and helping the BTWBS continue to be the fastest-growing classic wooden craft show in the southeast.

Roger Stouff

Gary Blum

If my list of current registrations all show up, this year’s BTWBS is going to be bigger and better than ever! We may double the number of boats on display from 2011.

Thanks to EVERYONE who said they’re coming, and we’ll keep you all updated. The show is only about five weeks away!

The Third Bayou Teche Wooden Boat show is set for April. 20-22!

The show starts Friday at about 6 p.m., and will continue through Sunday. We’ve progressed from a single day show, to two days last year and now for the full weekend. The show is held in conjunction with the Bayou Teche Black Bear and Birding festival along Parc sur la Teche in the historic district of downtown Franklin, Louisiana

Please join us, either as a participant or a viewer, for what has become the fastest growing wooden boat event in Louisiana.

(St. Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune, April 22, 2011)

It started as a spur-of-the-moment idea around a breakfast table at a local restaurant.
Two years later, the Bayou Teche Wooden Boat Show has grown by at least a leap, and a bound seems to be in the works.
Organizers Roger Stouff and Gary Blum welcomed the owners of two dozen boats to Franklin last weekend – not including the boats they own themselves.
“It was just a passing thought,” Stouff said. “Last year’s Bayou Teche Black Bear and Birding Festival was a few months away and one of us said, `Hey, why don’t we do a wooden boat display?’ To this day, neither of us will admit whose idea it was because we have too much fun blaming each other,” he joked.
But that first show came together and 12 boats showed up, three of which were from out of the area. The show ran that Saturday only but as Blum recalls, “When we went to pick up our own boats Sunday morning, people were still coming to see them. We ended up staying until late that afternoon letting festival-goers see the boats and talking to them about the boats.”
What started as a hair-brained idea suddenly became a possible success. The duo decided to give it one more try, for the 2011 festival, just to “make sure it wasn’t a lark,” Stouff says.
It wasn’t. This year, 28 boats were on the bayou side and in Bayou Teche at Parc sur la Teche near Adams Street. Participants included owners of wooden boats from Alabama, Mississippi, Ruston, Lafayette, Denham Springs and more.
The show ran two days this year, because, as Stouff says, “We were here two days anyway last year.”
The success of this year’s show cinched the deal: The Bayou Teche Wooden Boat Show would continue.
“How could we not?” Stouff said. “Gary and I didn’t start this because we needed something else to do in our lives, that’s for sure. We did it because we’re a coupla guys who own and love wooden boats, and love meeting and talking with other people who love wooden boats, whether they’re our guests participating in the show or the good people who come to see the boats. The common thread there is still…wooden boats.”
Both say their relationship with the main festival has been cordial and beneficial. “I think we’ve helped them by bringing in people who might not otherwise have made the trip from Alabama or Mississippi down here to see this festival,” Blum said. “By the same token, they’ve helped us by helping promote our event and accommodating us whenever we needed anything.”
This year’s show featured, among many other boats: Cypress pirogues, Cajun skiffs, the classic “putt-putt” bateaus of Acadian history, mahogany runabouts conjuring back to the days of Chris-Craft, Garwood and Hacker boats, canoes and more.
What is it about these vessels, which some would consider obsolete and out-dated, that makes people obsess about them?
“It’s a legacy,” Stouff said. “Wood is an organic material, it has cellular structure and membrane. It is, even in its cut, dry state, more similar to us as human beings than any other boat building material. It has warmth and a tactile feeling of life. From the first time primitive man crawled on a fallen log and floated across a lake or river, wooden boats have been in our blood. They’ve been around tens of thousands of years longer than fiberglass or metal boats.”
Blum said the attendants at this year’s show were overwhelmed by Franklin’s southern hospitality, beauty and of course, waters. “Three of them had been here before,” he said. “And this year, every single one not only said they’d be back, but they’d spread the word about this community and this show. That can only be good for Franklin and the surrounding area.”

Because as Ratty said in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows: “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

The show kicks off Saturday morning and runs through Sunday evening!

We’ve got more boats than last year, and expect a fine showing of all manner of craft, little to large, classic to modern, all wood, of course.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!