If you have an old boat – and you have the patience, and the money – Adam Pederson can make it look and run like new. Probably even better.
It doesn’t even need to be a good old boat. But it does need a good story. In fact, the story matters more than the boat.
You will still need money and patience, though. These things can take time, and Adam is a craftsman.
The owner of Eleven North Marine, Adam is currently restoring a 1985 Charger for a client. “These were not fabulous boats,” he says. “They looked great and ran fast, but they weren’t built to last. It might have been $4,200 new, maybe less, including the motor. They were built so you’d buy it, run it, then trash it.”
But this particular one came with a good story. The owner had saved his money and bought it when he was a teenager. He ran it for years, but when he became a father, the boat went into storage in a barn. Now he wants it back in the water so he and his teenage daughter can enjoy it together.
“I love a good story like that,” says Adam. And so, he’s doing a complete restoration – new motor, transmission, upholstery, gelcoat, the works. “If someone pulled into the yard, told me they’d bought it at auction and wanted it restored, I wouldn’t touch it. For starters they wouldn’t believe me if I told them how much it would cost to restore it.”
Adam comes by his love of classic boats naturally. His father was passionate about wooden boats – the classic Muskoka mahogany vessels that dominated waterways in the first half of the 20th century. Adam enjoyed them and restored some with his father, but when he was growing up in the 1970s, it was fast fibreglass boats that caught his eye.
“I’d just be cruising around the lake at the cottage, or pumping gas at the marina, seeing all these amazing boats, and saying that one day I’d own a boat like that,” he says.
Eventually he decided to turn his passion into a second career (his first was in home construction). He and Nicole, his wife, opened Eleven North Marine in 2013.
The business was a success, but Adam wasn’t happy. He was spending too much time dealing with unrealistic expectations from some customers. Things got worse when the pandemic reached its peak. People who had been locked down for too long were buying anything that floated – or that looked like it might float. They’d pull it into the shop on Hwy 11 with their Kijiji finds and Adam would have to explain to them that they’d been fleeced, that repairing the boat would cost many times what a new one would have set them back.
So, in 2024, Adam and Nicole sold the property and decided to downsize the business.
The one regret he has is that he didn’t remove the sign from the property when they sold it. “The buyer said he would replace it with his own sign, so I agreed to leave it up, just to be a nice guy and help him out.”
One year later, their former site looks like it’s abandoned – a building that collapsed under the snowload last winter enhances the look – but the Eleven North Marine sign remains in place. “People think we went out of business. But I can’t go in there and take the sign down, because I’d be trespassing.”
It’s frustrating, he says, but then shrugs: there are more important things to worry about. Like finding the parts for a 1984 Mastercraft. This one has another story – the owner was a keen waterskiier in her youth, and this was her tow boat. “It’s not worth putting the money into it, really. But if it’s got a great story, I’m in,” says Adam.
With a full engine rebuild facility, an on-site paint and fibreglass shop, and an upholsterer on speed dial, there’s not much that Adam can’t do. And his work is widely recognized. Boats have come from the southern US, from the Ottawa Valley, and from Alberta, all seeking a craftsman’s attention.
“It doesn’t need to be a full restoration,” he says. “Sometimes it just needs a bit of refurbishment, a bit of TLC.”
Are there any projects he’s hoping to work on? He laughs at the question. “Oh, so many!”
He recently stopped in to visit a friend who specializes in wooden boat restorations and saw an early 1960s Riva in the shop. “It was his own boat, and it was gorgeous,” says Adam. “There might only be two of them in the country.”
His first thought was “I’d love to own that boat, or at least work on it.”
As he says it, just for a moment, you can see a teenage boy flickering behind his eyes. A teenager spending the summer driving a Boston Whaler around the lake, dreaming about the boats he would one day own.
TEXT A. WAGNER-CHAZALON
PHOTOS ANDREW FEARMAN
