CHAUTAUQUA LAKE – It was “One Fine Day” in August in the northern basin of Chautauqua Lake.

The sky was clear, the air was warm but not humid, and the afternoon was as beautiful as it gets on a lake that sits slightly higher than 1300 feet above sea level.

Paul Johnson describes the lake as having the highest elevation of any natural navigable body of water east of the Rocky Mountains.

Johnson should know.

He has been boating on Chautauqua Lake all of his life, having received his first boat when he was five years old and having been a volunteer captain of the Bemus Point-Stow Ferry for more than a decade.

As captain of One Fine Day, he takes passengers out onto Chautauqua Lake and gives them a tour that not many people can give.

And not just because the tour is aboard a fully restored, semi-enclosed Lyman Day Cruiser built in 1966, 28.5 feet long and 10.5 feet wide, with twin engines, a private changing area, and a marine head, which – for those who don’t know the vocabulary – means an indoor facility.

Johnson tailors tours to the interests of his guests. Guests can enjoy picnicking, underwater exploring with side scan sonar, sunbathing, or just relaxing.

Passengers who are history buffs, as he is, disembark filled with stories of the 19th and 20th centuries on the lake.

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As the tour, which departs from the Long Point State Park marina, approaches Long Point, Johnson – using sonar – shows an Aug. 12 guest where pilings from the former Long Point dock remain, 20 feet below the surface.

A century ago, Bainbridge Colby had a home on land that now belongs to the park.

Johnson recalls that Colby, once a Bull Moose Republican, became a Democrat and, as secretary of state to President Woodrow Wilson, developed the Colby Doctrine, under which Western nations refused to recognize Russia after it became the Soviet Union, following the Bolshevik Revolution.

In the 1930s, however, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted an alliance with the Soviet Union and scrapped the doctrine, Johnson said. So Colby switched back to the GOP and gave speeches from the front porch of his Long Point home.

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Johnson also recalls that Frank Gifford, while he was president of First National Bank in Jamestown about a century ago, would take his 65 foot yacht from Long Point to the Jamestown boat landing on workdays.

After he died, his daughter wanted no one else to have the yacht. So Johnson said she had it filled with rocks and had the hull shot full of holes until the yacht sank in 42 feet of water up the lake from Long Point.

And there it sits for Johnson’s guests to see slightly on sonar.

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It used to be that steamboats were the primary means of travel between the far points of the lake’s northern and southern basins.

But as streetcars proliferated, steamboats became less profitable and began falling out of favor.

Nowadays, those who have boats they no longer want take them out of the water and sell or dismantle them. But in the years of the dying steamboat industry on Chautauqua Lake, Johnson said many steamboats were simply sunk:

¯ For example, the City of Buffalo lies in 42 feet of water just up the lake from Long Point, and

¯ Another, the City of New York, had a more dramatic end. Johnson said it was set ablaze on the water in front of Celoron Park on Labor Day. With the goal of sinking the charred wreckage in the northern basin, which is significantly deeper than the southern basin, the steamboat was towed up the lake, but Johnson said it sank in 20 feet of water in the southern basin, where it remained a navigational hazard until it rotted sufficiently.

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According to One Fine Day’s website, https://www.onefinedaychq.com, recommended tours run two to four hours and can include both the northern basin and the southern basin, subject to wind and water conditions.

The name One Fine Day comes from the song by the Chiffons, Johnson said, recalling the lyrics: “One fine day you’ll look at me, and you will know our love was meant to be.”

On Chautauqua Lake, any nice, warm day can be “One Fine Day.”

For four decades, Randy Elf’s paternal grandparents had a summer cottage at Cheney’s Point, yet he didn’t know such boats lay at the bottom of the lake.

COPYRIGHT ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF