SKANEATELES - Area native Dick Sherwood remembers a time when wooden boats dominated the waters of Skaneateles Lake.

This weekend, the Webster resident watched that memory become reality as 45 wooden boats, the oldest from 1904 all the way up to some crafts from the 1960s, docked in Skaneateles for the 30th annual Antique and Classic Boat Show.

The Finger Lakes Chapter Antique and Class Boat Society, headquartered in Skaneateles, organized the show.

The weekend-long event kicked off Friday night and will run through today.

While the most popular activity is perusing the boats docked next to the pier off of Clift Park, groups offered a range of entertainment and activities to coincide with the show. The Skaneateles Historic Society offered tours through the village, a variety of concerts, and a boat parade on Saturday. The judged show included 11 basic award categories, such as best historic and rowing classic, but also included nearly 20 special honors including unmounted motor and best Canadian-built boat.

Sherwood looked forward to the award ceremony since the beginning of the show, and not just because he was displaying a 1910 Fay and Bowen.

This year, the committee added a feature to the Saturday night awards ceremony. They projected photos of boats taken throughout the first two days of the show. Then when people announced the awards, the image of the winning boat filled the screen, Sherwood said.

“At most boat shows you go to, John Doe, boat something or other won best something or other and everyone applauds and then you do your best to think about who is John Doe and what boat did he really have,” Sherwood said.

With raising gasoline prices, Sherwood said attracting people from across the country and Canada is a testament to the quality of the show. This year had fewer land displays but the same number of boats in the water #) 45.

“We try to make the whole dog-gone boat show very user friendly, exhibitor friendly,” Sherwood said.

One example of that is the valet service at the launch. People putting boats in the water didn't have to worry about finding parking or leaving their boats unattended, Sherwood said. Another crew helped people dock the boat and their have their keys waiting for them at the registration table.

Past event chair Arnold Rubenstein said the show is so popular because people are interested in nostalgia. He created a display for the show that stood near the water in Clift Park. The exhibit showed life in 1941, and included an old-fashioned telephone and a photograph from the Skaneateles Boat Inc. A radio played different broadcasts from the era such as Japan's bombing on Pearl Harbor and Bob Hope's comedy shows.

“I wanted to put the boats in a context,” he said.

The wooden boats lined up along the dock on Skaneateles Lake are a living history to times before plastic and fiberglass changed boatmaking, Rubenstein said.

For some boat owners, their interest lies in uncovering their vehicles' personal histories. Syd Bruce Marsden, former resident of Skaneateles, showed a 1929 Hacker Craft. He enjoyed talking to people about their boats, and telling them his story. His boat was used to smuggle liquor from Canada into New York during Prohibition. Now, the old booze runner has a life as a showboat.

“That's the fun of it,” Marsden said, “restoring them and bringing them back to life.”