Renovation rescue

SO, you are thinking of buying a project boat? I have a word of advice for you: don’t!

“But she has such beautiful lines,” you say. Ah yes, we said that too. It is not the lines that matter, it’s the many thousands of dollars required to fill in those lines that will break you.

I suppose everyone has one boat renovation in them. But you should be 100 per cent sure that this boat will meet your needs for the rest of your natural boating life, so help you Neptune.

We were looking for a boat to sail the world. Our combined sailing experience was minimal, I had sailed the Queensland coast over fifteen years ago but Gary had never sailed, he was an ex-farmer who had fished from tinnies or skied behind a speedboat on Lake Keepit.

This was pre-GFC, when the bottom would fall out of the boating market, so prices were still high while our budget was less than $75K. Steel vessels were tougher and cheaper than fibreglass.

A 13 metre steel ketch with nice lines (uh oh) had been ‘reduced’ from $120,000 to $59,000.

We drove from Coffs Harbour to Sydney and had a look. Ballyartella was a patchwork of green and yellow on the outside with a Leprechaun drinking a Guinness stencilled on its bow; half-finished on the inside, with a composting toilet and chimney.

There were alarm bells ringing, but all we could hear