I’ve always had a thing about Nelson 40s. The first one I bought back in the mid-1980s was an ex-Abu Dhabi police launch that could only be described as a wreck. I found it lurking at the back of an industrial boat yard on Hayling Island. In fact there were two of them but one had a Nelson-shaped hole in the side from a previous encounter with its stablemate. Even the undamaged one was in a right old state; the hull was delaminated, the superstructure was rotten, it was full of water and none of its systems or fittings were salvageable – not even the machine gun mounting points on the flybridge and foredeck. More’s the pity – there were times when they could have come in handy on a summer’s day in the Solent!
Still, something must have convinced me to buy it and spend several years of my life restoring it to its former glory. I was a newly qualified airline pilot at the time and must have bored my colleagues witless with my plans. Even now when I bump into them they often ask me whether I ever finished “that MTB you were working on years ago?” Shows how much they were really listening!
FLYING ON FUMES
How I didn’t get tetanus from rebuilding that rotten old wreck, I still don’t know but a combination of youthful zeal and a bloody-minded refusal to admit defeat eventually paid off. The rebuild took five years and more money than I care to admit but it was done to a very high standard and the end result was a lovely boat that gave us ten years of safe, enjoyable cruising.
