AN EPIC RESTO-VERSION
Throughout their lives Wal and Chris McCadames have owned and restored everything from rowing dinghies to putt-putts, launches and trawlers. Many of these wooden boats were near derelict and would have been lost forever without the skills, care and love that Wal and Chris lavished upon them. By the early 1980s, Wal and Chris McCadames had a number of restoration under their belts and undertook a project to convert a partly stripped-down 34-foot work boat into a comfortable family cruiser.
Their acquisition of the boat was quite novel. At the time they owned Beguine, a 32-foot Buchanan-designed yacht, built in Mosman Bay by Alan Moore and launched in 1961. “It was a lovely yacht, typical in those days of what used to sail in the Sydney-Hobart,” Wal recalled.
However, a very good friend needed some funds for a business deal, so he asked Wal and Chris to swap the eminently saleable for a not-at-all-saleable work boat he owned. The challenge of the work boat appealed, so the swap was done.
