Today was Maryann White’s first time on Belle Isle in 30 years.

The island was filled with memories for the 76-year-old Burton resident who attended the Vintage and Antique Racing Boat Show, hosted by the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on the banks of the Detroit River.

She stopped to chat with Dave Bush of Walled Lake, owner of Thunderbolt, a 1952 Speedliner boat built with a passenger cockpit in front of the boat’s steering wheel.

The watercraft brought back memories of riding in a Speedliner boat with her late husband, Joe White.

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“My husband was racing on the Tahquamenon, and he put me in the front and we went all the way down as far as we could go down the Tahquamenon, just looking,” White said of the river in the Upper Peninsula.

Just about the whole family has a history of racing boats, including White and her daughter, four sons and their father. White began driving race boats at about age 9 in the Saginaw River, but hasn’t raced in at least two decades.

White’s daughter Jackie Neslund, 55, of Presque Isle said the family hasn’t been around the boats since her father passed away twenty years ago.

“We were hoping there would be a lot of racers and people that she knew from my dad’s time racing,” Neslund said.

Museum curator Joel Stone said that about twenty boats participated in the show, the first of its kind at the museum.

Most of the boats were either runabouts or hydroplanes. Runabouts are boats with a hull that resembles that of a rowboat, and hydroplanes are faster and have sponsons that reduce surface area, according to show organizer Ed Zaleski, who was displaying his 1969 runabout named Challenger.

The boats came in all shapes and sizes — like the 10-horsepower shovel-nose style, and the pickle-fork style with two sponsons jutting out in front. The crafts are classified as either outboard or inboard, depending on where the engine was placed.

The boats remained on land during the event, but Zaleski described riding them as a thrill.

“You look down, and you’re in the air,” Zaleski said. “You’re like an airplane. You’re about the closest thing to an airplane in a hydroplane as you can be.

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Zaleski said the idea for the show was inspired by Miss Pepsi, a 36-foot hull boat housed at the Dossin museum. The Dossin family used to have the Pepsi franchise that distributed Pepsi throughout Michigan and northern Ohio, Stone said.

Miss Pepsi was built and launched in 1950, and according to the museum, it was the first boat to qualify for a race at a speed of over 100 m.p.h.

Stone said that Detroit is one of a few places around the country that are centers for racing, including Madison, Ind., and Seattle. He said Detroiters have been racing on the Detroit River since 1916.

“We had companies that made boats, we had companies that made engines, and we had people who had a lot of money,” Stone said. “You put all three of those together, and you’ve got a racing hotbed.”

But not all sides of Detroit are equal when it comes to boating. At least, Paul Poledink — who grew up on Detroit’s east side — thinks so.

“If you grew up on the east side of the city of Detroit, you were by the water all the time,” Poledink said with a smile. “People on the west side of Detroit are far away from the river. They don’t know anything about these boats.”

The 76-year-old Lyon Township resident was at Belle Isle displaying his 1972 hydroplane White Lightning, which reaches a top speed of 90 m.p.h.

One of the oldest boats at the show was owned by Mike McHugh of West Bloomfield. It’s a 14-foot mahogany and white oak hydroplane built in the mid-1920s.

McHugh, 57, who produces car paints and has owned four racing boats over the years, said he bought the boat in 2014 and restored it over a three-year period. The rebuilt 1928 motor still needs some breaking-in, so McHugh has yet to take the boat out on the water.

“I just love working with old stuff and wood,” McHugh said. “Taking something that was a piece of garbage, and turning it back to life again.”

Contact Hasan Dudar: hdudar@freepress.com.