FLORENCE, Ala. (AP) — At Vintage Autos in Florence, owner Jason Schurfield is used to dealing with antique vehicles, but he was in for an adventure when he got a rare Chris Craft boat earlier this month.

Schurfield and his crew, John David Cassady, John Lee and Ree Rollison, acquired a 1949 34-foot Chris Craft Express cruiser. At first glance, it seemed like a nice boat, but after digging into its history, Schurfield learned it was one of 100 models made from 1947 to 1949, a period in between the company’s shift to produce vessels for World War II and the “post-war consumer expansion” that helped Chris Craft thrive in recreational boating.

Not to mention, the boat, dubbed “Miss Adventure” for the former upstate New York mock frontier amusement park Adventuretown, was owned by the Edgewood Resort in Clinton, New York. For decades, it was used to offer tourists dinner cruises on the St. Lawrence River.

“I thought, ‘man, this would be a great boat for the Shoals,’” Schurfield said. “There’s nothing really like that around here.”

Now, Schurfield and his crew have the painstaking task of getting a 71-year-old boat back in the water. Luckily, it’s only been four years since Miss Adventure was shipshape.

The issue, however, is dealing with a wooden boat vs. fiberglass. Currently, they’re in the process of stripping down the boat to its base wood and getting underneath the epoxy varnish that glosses the exterior.

From there, once the boat is sanded and replaced with the correct materials – which are accessible by ordering online – they’ll begin the swelling process, which is mostly done by trial and error.

“The wood has to go back and swell, so you’ve actually got to flood the boat inside, and let the inside kind of swell up, and then you put it in the water and let it sit at a dock for a day or two,” Schurfield said. “Let all the joints swell together and see if you have any issues that way that you have to address.”

Before beginning the process of refurbishing the boat, the crew took some time to learn its background.

That led them to the previous owners, Ernie and Lori Passaro. The Passaros purchased the boat in 1987 and kept it as a family staple for decades before trading it in four years ago.

Much like Schurfield, it took the Passaros some time to learn the true history of the boat.

Bud Hebert owned Miss Adventure after he opened the park in 1955 with George Clark.

Ernie recalled the day he made the connection to the Heberts. He was taking Miss Adventure on a cruise to stay overnight at the Riveridge Hotel in Alexandria Bay.

When he docked the boat, a man came up to admire it, informing Ernie that he used to take rides in it when he was young, when the boat was owned by Edgewood.

Intrigued, Ernie used the boat’s ship-to-shore communication to call out to anyone that could help with any more background information.

A man pulled up and introduced himself as a grandson in the Hebert family, immediately identifying the boat.

Ernie, in order to make sure, asked him how he knew.

“‘When you strip all down to bare wood, was the first color on the boat powder blue?’” Ernie recalls the man asking. “I said ‘yep, it sure was’ and they said ‘that’s the way we ordered it.’”

The refurbishing process for the Passaros took seven years, mostly because they worked on it when they weren’t operating their wood and welding company in suburban Rochester, New York.

“It just made it more difficult because it was so damn big, there’s a lot of square footage on that boat,” Passaro said. “I had to do it outside and had to build a makeshift garage.”

Passaro said it took a whole summer to strip the boat down to bare wood. The process then went to sanding and varnishing the wood, replacing all the top and cabin sides as well as whatever planks needed to be replaced in the hull. He also built a custom trailer for the boat.

For him, it was about preserving a piece of history. Schurfield is hoping to keep that tradition going, opting not to rename the boat.

The blueprint for him and his crew relies heavily on insight from outside sources, namely the Passaros, Cassady’s family background in wooden boats as well as resources online.

While Schurfield is open to anyone purchasing the boat, he feels it would be a good fit for a place like the Marriott Shoals or any place that could use it in the same way the Edgewood did.

He said he’s had several people inquire about the boat, but he wants to be diligent in making sure the restoration is done right.

“(It) would be awesome to (have it) back in use as a dinner cruiser or a tour of our local waterways,” Schurfield said. “(But right now), we’re just taking our time just making sure we do what’s needed.”