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SEADRIFT – Sam Amelio would have been proud, but he likely would have still called his grandsons crazy.

For the second year in a row, John and Jim Amelio finished the Texas Water Safari in a wooden boat constructed in 1985 by their grandfather and father, John Sr.

The cedar boat was made for open water, not for the treacherous, rocky rapids of the Texas Water Safari.

But the Amelio brothers decided in 2007 to give the TWS a try.

“Grandpa thought they were nuts,” John Sr. said.

The Amelios conquered the 260-mile TWS in 82 hours in 2007.

John Jr. spent much of the winter at his Chicago, Ill., home restructuring the boat and reduced its weight about 60 pounds.

In March, Sam Amelio died at the age of 92 from a sudden illness. The Amelio brothers decided to come back this year with hopes of improving their time, but quickly realized that just finishing the grueling race would be a more realistic goal.

With the very low water conditions of the San Marcos and Guadalupe rivers, the Amelios found themselves having to carry or walk the 18-foot, 85-pound boat downstream much more than they has expected.

“They thought they would have a better chance this year because they thought they were going to get last year’s water,” John Sr. said.

“We didn’t really know about the low water until we got here,” said John Jr., who lives in Allen.

The Amelios’ 2008 Safari almost ended at the Luling checkpoint. Boats must reach Luling by a certain time or be forced to exit the race.

The Amelios reached the checkpoint with only five minutes to spare. They weren’t about to come all the way to South Texas and have their race end after only a few hours.

“We would make a bend in the river and it wouldn’t be there. We kept telling each other it had to be coming up soon,” John Jr. said of the checkpoint.

“You plan and work months for this,” John Jr. said. “Dad worked on this boat since January and we had a bunch of folks come down here for this. We had to make it.”

The Amelios did make it. They reached Seadrift at around 10 a.m. Wednesday to finish with a time of 97 1/2 hours.

Boats had to land at Seadrift within 100 hours to officially finish.

Their cedar boat finished last out of the 53 that reached Seadrift. But the most important thing for the Ameilos was that they finished.

“We wanted to keep paddling around until 99 hours and 59 minutes,” joked Jim, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights. “But it was too hot out there.”

The old cedar boat showed plenty of wear and tear as John Sr., who served as his sons’ team captain, washed it off while his sons showered and freshened up.

There were scratches along the hull and on the bottom of the boat from it grazing rocks and logs during the long trek. There was a crack on the starboard side that required some patching up.

John Sr. was a teacher for 35 years before retiring a couple of years ago. He got the idea of building the boat when a shop teacher at his school began constructing canoes.

“It’s great to be able to spend time together,” he said.

The Amelios said Wednesday this may be their last Texas Water Safari. They said they may concentrate on less-stressful, open-water events in Wisconsin.

John Jr. wasn’t so sure.

“Hey, we said we wouldn’t come back last year, but somehow we’re here,” he said.

“We always say we’re never coming back, but over the winer we start talking it up again,” John Sr. said.