Rebirth of a Boat
Why spend a shedload of money on a new boat when you can transform your old hull for much less cash? DAVID GREEN reports on his boat’s rebirth process
IN 2000 I bought a 6m centre cabin Sportfish plate tinny from Northside Marine in Brisbane. It was my third Sportfish in 20 years. Over the past decade, the boat, called Gemma 3, has gone through three outboards and two trailers. The most recent outboard, a three-year-old 150 Honda, had about 1400 hours on it and the paint on the plate alloy hull was starting to peel. At 10 years of age, Gemma 3 was getting a bit shabby.
I thought long and hard about my options. I could have ridden the current import wave with a high dollar and a tragic US economy and cheaply imported one of the many American fibreglass boats currently available or I could have purchased a new local boat; but the fact is I really like Gemma 3’s hull. It’s a centre cabin that works, is as tough as nails, has excellent rough water performance and catches fish. So I made the decision to keep it and take it through a complete makeover. This project took a couple of months and was organised by Geoff Newman at Runaway Bay Marine Services.
All that remains of the old boat is the hull, the seat bases and the steering wheel. After this transformation I’ve got an even better boat than the original. Gemma 3 is now effectively a brand new boat and, I’m happy to say, is a considerable improvement on its former self.
I’m pretty busy with work and other commitments, and it was great to find a “one stop shop” with the boys at Runaway Bay Marine Services. They co-ordinated the entire project and became very attached to my boat over the time they had it.
The original idea was to repaint the hull, which meant everything had to come off so the hull could be sand blasted back to bare metal. I dropped the boat off on a Monday, and by the Wednesday she was stripped back with all attachments removed and looked a bloody great mess. Too late to rethink the idea now! I was committed to the change.
With a big four-stroke 150 Honda on the back, a kill tank full of fish and the live bait tanks full, the original Gemma 3 had been a bit bum heavy. To get more buoyancy in the hull we decided to extend the transom to fill in under the outboard pod, which added about 40cm to the length of the keel. This idea of “boxing in” the pod has worked very well. The transom extension fills in under the pod but is not full width. This alteration was done by Mick Fraser and he did a great job after some very careful planning. The extra keel length and rear flotation has lifted up the stern of the boat and made the hull much more evenly balanced at rest. I’ve been really happy with the hull’s performance, particularly with the new 150 Honda BLAST technology, since the makeover. It certainly gets out of the hole faster than the old motor. The pod extension has meant the motor rides higher in the water, meaning the boat is less trim dependent.
After the sand blasting was completed we could inspect the hull. There was virtually no corrosion at all. This Sportfish was part of the early “bullet proof” series (similar to the current Noble Super Vees) with a hull of 4mm plate. Effectively, after more than 10 years hard work, the sand blasted hull was in mint condition. The boat looked like the skeletal remains of the craft I knew and loved, and it was time to plan all the other fittings and extras for the complete makeover of Gemma 3.
The boat went to Elite Kustom Paintworx in Southport for the next part of the journey. This paint shop is more used to doing custom cars than boats, but had been highly recommended as a quality operation, and I wasn’t disappointed. Pietro Zago is a perfectionist with his paint jobs. The boat came back looking fantastic. It was so good I just couldn’t put the old upholstery back on, or the old trailer underneath it. The old, slightly battered workhorse now looked like a brand new boat. The green, yellow and white hull looked pretty smart as well. While this whole episode was starting to chew up a few dollars, the reality was I was actually saving a stack of money compared to if I’d traded Gemma 3 in on a new boat of similar capability.
The dark tinted windows of the old boat were always a problem when navigating at night, and were replaced with clear slightly blue tinted Perspex. These have been excellent. The electronics were totally stripped, which was quite a big job for Richie, and the entire wiring loom was redone. I’d run an old Lowrance LMS 350 black and white sounder for over 10 years without a problem. A 10-year-old sounder is almost an antique as far as marine electronics go. It was definitely time for an upgrade! I spent a bit of time looking around at sounders and settled on a Simrad NSE 12 with all the bells and whistles. This is a 12-inch screen model with side scan, an amazing GPS and NMEA cabling so I can run all my outboard gauges from the sounder screen. In addition to this big dual unit I refitted my old small Lowrance Global Map 3600 GPS. I did this for three reasons. Firstly, if I’m snapper fishing I’ll use the Simrad to find the fish, but once I’ve got my spot I need to turn the sounder off (to prevent the “ping” spooking the fish). To do this I can either disconnect the transducer, which is a pain, or just turn the unit off and just work my spot on the separate GPS. The second point is that having a second GPS is good for back up safety. The little Global Map 3600 has an internal aerial and is very compact. The third reason is that my old Global Map holds several hundred event marks that aren’t recorded on my waypoint log but I need to retain. After a few weeks use, hampered by flooding and atrocious weather, it is pretty clear to me that the Simrad NSE 12 shows me things I just couldn’t see before, and the side imaging is great for finding bait schools and looking at sunken wrecks. This is an excellent unit that I am finding more and more value from every trip. It is also extremely easy to use and the menus are simple and easy to sort. This is a serious commercial unit that shows bottom structure like no other unit I’ve used before. On the structure scan in the Gold Coast Seaway I could see the underwater pipeline with a school of jewies hiding on the lee side of the pipe. This is amazing imaging.
I decided to repower Gemma 3 with another Honda, which is the fourth Honda that has been on this boat. As stated above, the new 150s with BLAST technology definitely get out of the hole faster than the older models, and in my early trials use less fuel when running at cruise speed at about 4000 rpm. I really like Hondas; they’ve provided me with more than a decade of trouble free offshore use. When I find something I like, I stick to it, and for anglers fishing offshore who do a lot of trolling, I reckon the four-stroke Hondas are very fishy motors. When you see marlin trying to eat a lure only a couple of metres behind the motor you appreciate how the noise made by these engines in no way scares the fish. This rarely used to happen before I changed to Hondas.
The Lowrance VHF radio fitted in the “new” Gemma 3 has also been very good, with a particularly useful feature of providing dual FM and VHF radio at the same time. This means you can have FM as a background and when transmission comes in over the VHF it goes over the top. We also refitted new aerials.
My old Swiftco trailer was pretty shabby and just didn’t sit well under the gleaming new boat, so we ditched it as well. I was sick of having my galvanised trailers rust out from the inside where it is impossible to clean them, so I bought an Archer aluminium trailer made by Telwater. After all the crappy trailers of my recent and distant past, this is the dream trailer because it won’t rust, is easy to clean and tows superbly. It required a bit of modification to fit my particular hull (these trailers are custom designed for the bigger Quintrex and Yellowfin range) but the construction of these trailers made it quite a simple job for Ian at Runaway Bay Marine services. After a month of use I am sure I will never ever own a trailer made of galvanised steel ever again. The trailer is very well designed and a pleasure to tow. Launch and retrieve is extremely simple.
Runaway Bay Marine Covers completed the job with a new set of clears, marine carpet and upholstery on seats and box tops. The quality of the work is very good. I modified my zips with the new upholstery so I can easily get through ventilation in calm hot conditions and improve airflow.
The exciting next step, once the work was done, was to go for a few trial runs. I was anxious about how extending the transom and filling in the pod would affect the boat’s performance, but I was pleasantly surprised how it actually improved it. The fuel flow gauge run through the NMEA on the Simrad was a real bonus as well (it’s good to know how much juice you’re using and how much you have left). After the first 20 minute run with the boys from Runaway Bay Marine Services I was convinced that I’d done the right thing by spending money on an old, tired boat to transform it into what was effectively a brand new craft.
The next test was to take it fishing. Unfortunately, as most readers will be aware, Queensland’s weather hasn’t really been the best of late, so our fishing opportunities have been somewhat limited. We caught a few spotted mackerel, but most days the water was flooded brown and the seas were rough. After a frustrating couple of weeks, we thought we had a day of half decent weather, but when the alarm went off at 4am the rain was pouring down and it was blowing a gale. Michael, my son, was still keen. When we got to the Seaway there was only a metre of swell but around 25 knots of stiff easterly wind. I could see plenty of birds working close to the entrance, so we headed out into hard, short windblown seas and started trolling. I wanted to push the new extended hull in rough conditions. This was soon achieved as the wind at the Seaway began blowing more than 30 knots. The swells were slamming the hull, the tops were busting off waves and we were sitting back trolling in relative comfort in the cabin. We caught five nice mackerel on trolled feathers and minnows, with one a bit over 10 kilos. The sounder showed the fish very clearly, the motor was purring and the hull ate the rough conditions with ease. Gemma 3 was back in action!
This entire project cost about $40,000, which was considerably cheaper than trading in the old boat on a new one. If you have a plate aluminium hull that you like, and keep it corrosion free, this type of project is well worth doing. These hulls can last a lifetime. I’ve ended up with a great new boat from a hull I already owned and liked.
If you’re considering revamping your boat, Greeny recomends you contact Runaway Bay Marine Services at info@marinesport.com.au or (07) 55774411. For new paint jobs, talk to Pietro at Elite Kustom Paintworx on (07) 5531 0097. For work on upholstery and clears, discuss the options with Runaway Bay Marine Covers on (07) 55296277.
