By David Rosen

Photo by Tamsin Venn

We lost a giant the day after Christmas. The only saving grace about his passing was that he wasn’t taken by the Covid virus. Like his knees, his heart wore out. He was on a hike with his kids and grandkids on a mountain in the Adirondacks… and then he was gone. Peter Hornbeck was very important to the development of our company (Adirondack Guideboat). Aside from being a source of inspiration and humor… tons of humor…. we also put him on our board of directors. No, this wasn’t an honorific position, on several occasions we needed a wise voice and Pete’s was it.
He had been a school teacher for 20 years, then began building boats in his garage. That was 50 years ago. His wife, Ann, was also a schoolteacher. She finally got tired of the smell of resin in the house, and gave Pete her summer check and told him to build a building out back. Last time we were there, he’d built four or five out-buildings in which he and his crew built and stored boats. They’d hang the boats from hooks, like cow carcasses hanging from the ceiling. All winter long they’d build an inventory and then as the warm weather arrived, that inventory would shrink and shrink.

I’ve never taken a survey, but I bet if you did that you would find that Pete was, and is, the most beloved person in the Adirondacks. His distinctive small yellow boats could be seen on top of every fifth car during the summer (or so it seemed. But his personality glowed even brighter.

Every year I bet Pete gave away $20,000 worth of boats for fund-raising events. Due to the ridiculously light weight of his boats (some as low as 12lbs, less than a 12 pack of beer), they were very popular with women. And oldsters. Pete was also a painter, usually of his boats in wilderness settings. I think he gave them all away, likely to non-profits needing money.

One of Pete’s boats sits in the Adirondack Museum. It is his version of Rushton’s Sairy Gamp (named after a Dickens character who was known to “take no water.”) The original is so tiny and beautiful, Rushton said to George Washington Sears, the diminutive writer for Field and Stream, for whom it was made, “If I made it any smaller I’d have to deliver it to you in a soup spoon.”

Farewell, Pete, your kind only comes along once.

David Rosen is the former co-owner of Adirondack Guideboat.