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Experience A Boat Renaissance: Meet Michael Claudon Of Snake Mountain Boatworks

photo by Photos provided by Snake Mountain Boat Restoration Little Chief is a 1948 Chris Craft Utility Deluxe that is now living on Twin Lakes in Salzburg, Austria with her new owner. Found in a hanger in Middlebury, Little Chief has a long and impressive heritage of passenger service in the Adirondacks. Completely renovated, Little Chief is just one the boats available to view on the Snake Mountain Boat Rehabilitation website.

Tuesday March 18, 2014

By Cookie Steponaitis

All journeys of great adventures seem to occur when people set sail and lose site of safe harbors. Such is the case involving the story of Michael Claudon and Snake Mountain Boatworks. Arriving in the Green Mountain State with his wife to begin their careers in education in 1970, Michael Claudon began with four acres, a few sheep and quickly found himself in need of more land and pasture. Claudon, as a professor of economics and competitive strategies at Middlebury College from 1970-2010 pioneered not only programs in the Soviet Union that extended the learning to real world applications but co-founded the Geonomics Institute, a non-profit organization that helped stimulate enterprises in what is now the former Soviet Union. Michael and wife Shirley devoted their time and passion among their teaching careers at Middlebury College and Middlebury Union High School, respectively, their home, a colonial salt box on ninety-three acres of land, their sheep and Michael’s business Addison County Clock Works which he ran from 1970 through the 1990s as he travelled the northeast buying, selling, restoring and repairing old clocks. Passionate about not only clocks, industrial works and architecture, Michael brought all his talents together with the 2000 launch of the Middlebury College initiative, DigitalBridges2.0™ which facilitated creating and growing programs that help people put thought into action. Created to help grow Vermont entrepreneurs and turn ideas into businesses, teams completed over sixty-two venture-building engagements with Vermont-based start-ups with 82% of those endeavors still active in December 2010, when he retired from teaching.
Michael and Shirley’s story turned a page into a new venture when the sheep barn became renovated into a 5000 square foot work space in 2009. Schooled in the ways of boat methods promoted by Don Danenberg, Michael’s desk boasts to this day a well-worn copy of The Complete Wooden Runabout Restoration Guide. While the business continues to expand the foundational principles, facets of Michael’s life and passions are visible upon entering the shop. With the precision of a man who restored clocks for over thirty years, Snake Mountain Boat Restoration is not a place for a person in a hurry. Each boat, whether a small family craft or a one of a kind vintage masterpiece is received and treated as if she were royalty. The goal of Michael and his crew John La Fountain and Roger ‘RJ’ Towle is to not only fix what other people may have repaired incorrectly but to bring polish, precision and restoration to every plank and grain of wood on the boat. With experience and their unfailing eye for detail, the process involves full restoration, saving every piece of wood possible while repairing hull, transoms and deck planking and framing; stripping, varnishing or painting; rebuilding engines and electrical or mechanical systems. Snake Mountain Restoration goes where few craftsman dare to the point where perfection is at hand until the boat is a piece of art.
Listening to Michael tell the story of each boat in the shop is a bit reminiscent of the famed story of Michelangelo locking himself in a room with the flawed piece of Carrera Marble and creating the Statue of David that he saw buried beneath. Traveling the back roads of the Northeast and scouting the Internet, Michael finds discarded antique wood boats in hay barns, under sheds or in pieces in a field. For example watch his YouTube videos of a  the 1964 25’ Lyman Sleeper that was he and Marselis Parsons rescued from a shed in Hague, New York where it had been languishing for almost a decade, and then, he brings back to life in his shop. Michael, speaking of the honor of restoring the Sleeper explains, “There were some rotted planks and many failed fasteners from keel to gunwale, all of which were released and replaced. We removed both bottom and topside paint, faired all surfaces and repainted her in copper bronze antifouling paint and Interlux two-part Jade Mist Perfection epoxy. We gutted, cleaned and repainted the bilge but only after replacing seventeen broken, rotted and failed ribs.” Today she is pristine and cruising Lake Champlain.
Seeing Michael Claudon in his element is witnessing the coming together of life long passions into a business that he never tires of. “It sure was different when I was standing up at Middlebury College and talking about starting up your own business and now when I am in one,” shared Michael, “but coming to work never gets old.” As fascinated by people as he is with mechanics, architecture, economics and boats Claudon has found a niche in the specialty world of Vermont craftsman that is both timely and timeless. Claudon is devoted to knowing the story of each of the boats he works on and is part historian, detective and master craftsman all in one. Each boat is restored and not fixed and seen as a treasure and living link to a heritage of the nation and transportation. Each gets the full time and full talents of Michael and his crew and no matter where each boat ends up sailing the waters of the world, Claudon stands like a proud papa following its journey.Whether you have an old dinghy or a piece of boating history in your possession there is a place in Addison County where your boat will be king or queen and when it emerges from Snake Mountain Boat Restoration it will have experienced its own renaissance. It seems that Claudon and his craftsmen were on the same page about boats and life as our former president F.D.R. when he remarked, “To reach a port we must set sail –Sail, not tie at anchor, Sail, not drift.”

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