Photos Courtesy Streblow Custom Boats
Lake Geneva, in southeastern Wisconsin, is home to a fleet of distinctive Philippine mahogany runabouts. Streblow Custom Boats traces its origins to the 1950s, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There, founder Larry Streblow began building wooden boats in his garage. Today, Streblow is one of the oldest continuously operating handmade wooden boat manufacturers in the world. Streblow boats are coveted by wooden-boat enthusiasts nationwide, but nowhere more so than in Lake Geneva, home to more than 100 of the roughly 500 vessels in existence. It is here that Edward Cox is dedicated to continuing the brand’s legacy.
“We are the premier wooden boat on Lake Geneva,” says Cox, who acquired Streblow Custom Boats in 2020. “It’s like owning a Steinway piano or a Rolex watch.”
The brand saw its launch when Larry Streblow, an aeronautical engineer who once designed fighter aircraft wings, used his engineering knowledge to design himself a fishing boat in the late 1940s. Friends at the Kenosha Yacht Club were impressed with his work and encouraged him to start a boat company. He moved operations to a three-stall garage in 1950, where business began to grow. In 1954, he moved again to the south side of Kenosha and formally incorporated.
Over the next few years, Streblow designed a range of wooden runabouts from 18 to 26 feet, scavenging mahogany from shipping crates due to postwar supply shortages. But it was in 1968 that he developed the prototype for the modern Streblow, a design that reportedly came to him in a dream.
“It started with a 23-footer,” Cox explains. “He created a deep-V bow, and he flattened it out as you went back toward the stern of the boat.” That hull shape produced a remarkably smooth ride, even in choppy lake waters. Streblow also pioneered a watertight bottom design, known as the “Streblow Special Bottom,” which eliminated the need to swell the hull at the start of the season. By 1973, Streblow was offering these models with standard midship inboard or aft V-drive engines. The V drives, which allowed for a horseshoe seating configuration, quickly became a favorite.
Larry Streblow worked closely alongside his son Randy, who built the boats his father designed. “Randy was an amazing woodworker,” Cox says. “He was an absolute genius at making these boats what they are today.” Cox estimates that Randy built at least 95 percent of the Streblow boats in existence. Randy also had new ideas for expanding the business. In 1987, Streblow moved to an old pig farm in Walworth, on the west end of Geneva Lake, where Randy recognized an opportunity to also store and maintain the boats they built in barns on the property.
“In Kenosha, Larry only made the boats. He didn’t store them, he didn’t take care of them, he just built them to sell,” Cox explains. “Randy saw that there was a much bigger market for maintaining the boats and storing the boats.”
Cox first met Randy at the Walworth facility in the 1990s, after Larry had retired from the business at age 82. Cox had recently purchased a house in Lake Geneva and was in the market for a boat. After asking a friend about the wooden runabouts with white hull stripes he kept noticing around the lake, he was encouraged to speak with Randy.
A serious boat restorer who has also overseen a major rebuild on his 67-foot, 1970 Burger yacht, Cox ultimately purchased a boat from Streblow that Randy didn’t have time to restore. “I decided to take the project on myself,” he says. “He told me I was the only customer at the time who actually started and finished restoring a boat, and he was very impressed by that.”
Not long after, Randy asked Cox for help planking the bottom of a new boat. At the time, Cox worked as a financial trader, but he began helping Randy on the side, spending the next 15 years learning the nuts and bolts of the craft and business.
When Randy passed away in 2011, the company entered a difficult period. Ownership transferred to heirs who lacked experience with the boatbuilding business, and employees approached Cox, asking for help saving the company. He acquired Streblow in 2020 and moved operations to Lake Geneva, expanding from a 5,000-square-foot building into a 15,000-square-foot facility.
“It took us about a year to get everything up and running after the move,” Cox says. “I pretty much had to start from square one.” Once established in the new facility, his first priority was supporting existing customers who needed maintenance and storage. To that end, he built two new facilities that together provide more than 75,000 square feet of humidity-controlled storage space.
His second focus was outfitting the shop with woodworking equipment to maintain the existing fleet. Over the next four years, his team worked on upwards of 10 boats each winter, stripping sides, repairing damage, and installing new interiors.
Once they were caught up on overdue maintenance for existing clients, phase three was to resume the building of new boats. The team is currently working on its first new build since Cox took ownership, a 26-foot model for a client in Lake Geneva.
“Once we get this boat finished, I think that’s the pinnacle of our business,” he says. “We have tackled all three branches of what needs to be done to have a successful boat company.”
As demand shifts toward larger boats, Cox plans to offer the 26-footer as Streblow’s base model and cease production of the 23-foot model that was popular when Larry and Randy ran the company. He also plans to offer 28- and 30-footers. Every boat uses the same hull design that Larry Streblow pioneered, and every boat is built exclusively with Philippine mahogany that has been dried for at least five years in Streblow’s buildings. All fasteners and screws are stainless steel.
While the hull design never changes, customers have full control once the hull is flipped upright. Seating configurations and interior finishings are fully customizable, and the company sources a range of exotic woods for use on the dashboard. Streblow powers its boats with 5.7-liter straight or V-drive engines—they do not use mufflers. “When you start the boat, it’s a unique sound,” Cox says. “Everyone on the lake knows, there goes a Streblow.”
Cox has eight full-time employees working in the shop. Once this first new build is complete, the company plans to produce about one boat per year.
Helping to continue the Streblow legacy is Cox’s son, Ryan, who has been taking on a growing role in the business since 2018, when he began helping in the shop after graduating college. Today, he works on the floor while also managing the company’s accounting.
“I didn’t go to school for woodworking or painting,” Ryan says. “I went to school for finance and then started helping them out and developed a passion for it.” He started learning the business from the ground up, cutting his teeth on menial tasks like scraping old glue off bottom planks. Over the years, he’s been mentored in the craft by the experienced builders in the shop.
“The guys that are here want to show the next generation what it takes to maintain and build wooden boats the proper way,” he adds. “There’s a lot of ways to do it, but there’s only a few ways that have actually proven themselves to work.”
That quality craftsmanship has kept Streblow runabouts on the water for decades. Cox has customers whose boats have remained in the same family for four generations. Since acquiring the company, he has focused on celebrating this legacy by creating the annual “Wake the Lake” event on Geneva Lake, where owners gather to showcase their boats. “It’s in honor of Randy and Larry Streblow,” he says. “It has become such a big social gathering that hardly anyone misses it.”
Looking ahead, father and son are both excited to forge their own path while upholding a legacy brand. “There’s definitely a lot on the horizon,” says Ryan. Edward hopes to eventually expand to the East Coast and possibly Lake Tahoe. For now, the focus is on scaling production organically while continuing to prioritize the build quality for which Streblow is known.
“My main focus was keeping the brand alive and keeping it the best-built handmade wooden runabout in the country, and I think we have done that,” says Cox. “We were able to not only continue on with Larry and Randy’s legacy, but now we’re creating a bigger legacy. And I think both those guys would be smiling down at us.”
This article originally appeared in the May 2026 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
