Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994 TAG: 9404110152
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was two days before he and his buddies were able to free it from a stretch of Giles County white water. When they did the canoe looked like a piece of bent junk.
``If there had been a dump between the river and the place I bought the canoe I would have thrown it away, thinking it was no good,'' said Williamson.
But he took the canoe back to the New River Canoe Livery in Pembroke, where he had purchased it used a couple of years earlier while a teen-ager living in Radford.
``Can you fix it?'' Williamson asked Dave Vicenzi, the livery owner.
``No problem,'' Vicenzi said.
``Dave straightened it out and put new gunnels on it and it looked like a new boat,'' Williamson said. ``I couldn't believe it.''
Something else Williamson had a hard time believing that day was Vicenzi's comment that the Blue Hole Canoe Co., in Sunbright, Tenn., was out of business.
Founded in 1974 by two engineers, it rapidly had gained the reputation among white-water paddlers as being the ``Cadillac of canoes,'' turning out a reported 1,000 craft a year in its heyday.
The fact that the company was dead in the water stuck in Williamson's mind. ``Wouldn't it be a neat company to own,'' he thought. But that dream faded when he sold his canoe back to Vicenzi and moved to Orange County, the home of his wife, Stephanie.
Then Williamson, 28, took a night business course at Germanna Community College in Locust Grove the fall of 1992. The first assignment from professor John Colangelo was to pick a company and write a business plan. Williamson remembered Blue Hole.
The academic exercise turned into a personal quest as Williamson found an old Blue Hole catalog and began making calls to Tennessee. Lenders had foreclosed on the company in 1988, he learned, and a Michigan firm had picked up the note. After manufacturing a few canoes it gave up. Williamson traced the Blue Hole molds and other manufacturing equipment to South Carolina, where Perception Inc., the world's largest kayak manufacturer, had purchased what was left of Blue
Hole and was storing the gear in a warehouse.
``What's the least you will take for it,'' Williamson said he asked Bill Masters, the owner of Perception.
When pressed for an offer, Williamson said, he quoted a figure so low that he feared Masters would hang up on him.
Instead, Masters said he would think about it. For Williamson the timing was perfect. Masters had just lost his lease on the building where the equipment was stored.
Five minutes later Masters called back with the figure Williamson said he was hoping for. ``He hit it on the head.''
That was on a Friday. Monday morning Williamson was in South Carolina.
``The hardest thing was pulling out that check book and giving every dime I had to get started,'' he said. ``I bet when I walked out that door the fellow laughed.''
Williamson has given new birth to Blue Hole in a shop located in Gordonsville, where friends and family members pitch in to help. On Christmas Day he delivered his first load of canoes. The destination was the New River Canoe Livery, where Vicenzi is using Blue Holes in his rental business and is serving as a sales representative. Others canoes have been delivered to the James River Basin Canoe Livery near Lexington.
Inquiries from paddlers who revere the Blue Hole name as representing high quality and fine engineering are coming from Canada to California, but Williamson is taking a cautious approach. He is limiting production to five models that range in price from $845 for a solo craft to $1,125 for a tandem.
The flagship of the operation is the 16-foot OCA model. Made of Royalex ABS, it can tackle white water, and is equally at home on flat water. Williamson calls it the ``Jeep of the canoe world.''
By the way, he made an A on his business course.
by CNB