Custom houseboat 2009: One Man's Boat

If you want to build a houseboat so you can spend weekends and holidays puttering about your favourite waterways in great comfort, who do you call? Do you commission a boat builder, a house builder or a cabinetmaker?

Clive James had an easy answer to the problem. As a master cabinetmaker who has his own factory where he turns out custom kitchens for customers all over Queensland, he decided to do it himself.

Well, almost all, by himself. James, a 57-year-old who lives on the Queensland Gold Coast, knew he couldn't make the hull himself so he turned to local fibreglass experts to build him a platform for his proposed floating holiday house.

James wanted something that would last for generations, so there are actually five hulls supporting the platform on which the construction sits. There are two each side and the fifth in the centre. The five hulls give the finished product terrific stability and a huge safety margin.

James designed the houseboat himself, so he didn’t cut corners. He wanted something distinctive but also very comfortable for his family. On the lower level are two bedrooms (maybe they are cabins but it is a moot point), a bathroom and a small lounge that also doubles as the helm station.

Upstairs there is another lounge/dining room and a full-sized kitchen that opens onto a vast entertaining deck.

'It is a proper floating holiday house," James told BoatPoint, "I didn’t cut any corners and only used the best possible materials."

The build took six months and the boat was launched in 2009. Since then it has explored the wonderful waterways of southern Queensland -- but a growing family has caught up with it.

"I recently bought a 32 foot Mustang and we now spend most of our leisure time on that, the houseboat just sits there," James explained, "It is such a terrific vessel it deserves to be used more, so I’m selling it."

The house portion of the vessel is built of solid marine ply and there are no stud walls or cheap veneers. The kitchen even has the soft-close drawers James uses in his top-line kitchens.

The boat is powered by a Yamaha 60hp high-thrust four-stroke outboard that pushes it along comfortably at six knots. The engine has only 90 hours on the clock.

Other equipment includes a 3Kva Honda inverter generator that powers a 1600 watt 12v-240v inverter. There are four deep-cycle house batteries with their own digital charger and an electric anchor winch with its own battery. There is also a separate starter battery for the engine.

The in-house fittings would shame many land-based holiday cabins. A Vacuflush toilet, a full-sized washing machine, a full-sized kitchen with a gas cooktop, convection microwave, rangehood and instant gas hot water are just a few of the home comforts.

On the upper deck there is a pull-out awning over the entertaining deck and a built-in barbecue with its own sink.

The engine has digital gauges at the helm, hydraulic steering and a depth sounder so the skipper can avoid those annoying sandbars.

When not admiring the views, guests can watch the 46 inch LED TV downstairs or the 34 inch LED TV upstairs. Both have DVD players and there is a stereo sound system.

To ensure that no-one has to miss out on a shower over a long weekend, the boat carries 350 litres of fresh water in two tanks.

At just over 35 feet long, more than 12 feet wide and over 16 feet high, James says moving the houseboat from the Brisbane/Gold Coast area would not be easy. But he says the top section of the vessel was built separately from the bottom and then screwed into place. "You could just as easily take it apart if you really wanted to move it elsewhere," he said.