“Simokon”, Commuter, 1929
Chris Smith and Sons Boat Co.,
Algonac, Michigan
Gift of Gari M. Stroh, Jr.

At 38 feet long, “Simokon” is large for a “small craft.” There are longer boats in the collection, but not many with the volume to accommodate the comforts of a home: a kitchen, a bathroom, and bunks for sleeping six.

In all, 22 passengers could ride comfortably in the sleek, fast vessel.

An auxiliary cruising boat is without question the most compact and ingenious arrangement for living ever devised by the restless mind of man – a home that is stable without being stationary, shaped less like a box than like a fish or a bird or a girl, and in which the homeowner can remove his daily affairs as far from shore as he has the nerve to take them. Here the sprawling panoply of The Home is compressed in orderly miniature and liquid delirium, suspended between the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky.

E.B. White, “The Sea and the Wind that Blows”