Hey everyone- I saw a thread recently of someone noting how sad it is to watch
project boats get abandoned and demolished, and it got me thinking as someone who just restored a yard queen and successfully took her somewhere (from
Annapolis to
Florida and then back to Norfolk), and who has done sailing on both
project boats and non-project boats (if that is even a thing), that perhaps my personal pro/con list to the "do I restore a
boat or do I buy a ready-to-sail one" might help some people who are considering the same thing, or provide some insight to the "where do I start to sail into the sunset?" crowd.
So, my
boat is a
steel Dutch-built 1974 30-footer. She had been sitting
on the hard for somewhere between 10 and 20 years, with the
cabin locked and the key
lost, and I owned the boat before I had even cut that lock off the
cabin and seen the inside. I spent April 2020-January 2021 restoring her, which included replacing the entire drivetrain, all of the
electrical, all of the
plumbing, all of the
rigging minus the
mast and boom themselves, repainting everything above and below the waterline and inside, repouring concrete in the bilges, hiring a welder to replace through-hulls that I could snap off with my hand, and
tracking down a plethora of
parts that no longer existed or were, for some reason, a mix of imperial and metric sizes. And despite the fact that this was a total
overhaul, I still managed to miss things. The best example is my stern tube that I've mentioned in a previous post- despite the fact that I thought I knew every square inch of the boat, I managed to miss that it was corroded through in multiple spots and was held together by 30-year-old
emergency tape left behind by the previous owner, until that tape decided to retire 1000 miles from home and I was forced into an
emergency haulout and month-long weld
repair. So, from this experience, this is what I have:
Cons to saving the yard queen:
1. It was not at all cheaper than
buying a similar-sized boat that just needed some fresh
paint, and obviously took significantly more time (this was my full-time engagement for the entirety of the
overhaul; when I wasn't working, I was on the boat)
2. I spent a decent amount of my time worrying that my
repairs and upgrades were done incorrectly or not well enough, or that I missed something, and that ended up being confirmed in a few cases, most notably the corroded-through-stern-tube
3. I was lucky that my boat was savable in the first place; if she'd been made out of a lower grade of
steel, for example, she probably would've been rusted beyond
repair on the stands before I got to her
4. I had no idea how she'd sail during all those months I was working
on the hard; there was no opportunity for a trial to see if I liked how she handled before I already invested over half of the time and
money that would end up going into her
5. Despite the fact that the shotty tape on my stern tube decided to wait to give until I was back in the
ICW and relatively close to a yard, it easily could have gone out a week prior when I was
offshore and could not even reach it to slap emergency epoxy/anything on it. The fact that she was a yard queen with large hidden problems could have resulted in complete disaster.
Pros to saving the yard queen:
1. I knew every inch of the boat (except apparently the exact one that I couldn't see or feel and apparently mattered the most), and I knew how all of my systems worked since I installed them myself
2. I got to customize everything to my liking, all the way down to the spacing between the
mast steps to fit my exact height
3. I was forced to do tons of
research that I may not have done otherwise
4. I was forced to spend a crazy amount of time in
hardware stores, etc and interact with experts that I may not have met otherwise
5. I got to save a boat that now has a lot of life left in her
6. There is, in my opinion, twice as much satisfaction in completing a trip under an
engine I installed myself,
sails and
rigging I picked out, and a boat that would have sank at launch if not for the
repairs I did than if I had done the same trip in a ready-to-sail boat
7. While I would've learned a lot through this trip in any boat I'd picked, I learned five times as much through the fact that I restored the boat myself first and it made it even more unforgettable
I'm curious to see what others might have to say on it- I'm hoping this thread might turn into something more substantive than the "do it, you'll find purpose and satisfaction" and "don't do it, you'll throw away all your
money and injure yourself or worse" back-and-forths that sometimes come out of people asking whether they should get a fixer-upper or not. Because I do think there's a case to be made for both- in my case, I don't plan on saving any other yard queens, but I also wouldn't go back and change a thing about how I saved this one.