Custom steel flybridge cruiser: One Man's Boat

The sandhills of the semi-desert in far western Queensland is not a place where you would normally find inspiration for a big, comfortable, steel, long-range, flybridge cruising boat. But that is exactly where Cyril Jones first spotted his boat-building material.

In the mid 1800s, mining companies searched for every mineral they could think of in the remote parts of Queensland and they took a vast amount of mine building materials with them.

In the 1950s, Cyril Jones, then working as a travelling piano tuner, spotted large sheets of mild steel stacked in the sand hills of a remote station and asked how they got there and who owned them.

He was told about the failed mining venture of a century before and, on examining the steel sheets, he found they had barely picked up a coat of surface rust since being abandoned. Also trained as a boiler-maker and welder, Cyril decided the blemish-free, English-made mild steel would make the perfect material for the big cruising boat he was planning.

He shipped the steel to the coast and started work on a 42-foot custom trawler-style cruiser. He took the lines from 36-foot commercial trawler and added six feet to make a comfortable aft cabin.

It was not a quick build. Cyril started work in 1955 and the hull wasn’t ready for launching until the 1980s. He used 8mm steel for the hull bottom, 5mm steel for the topsides and 3mm steel for the cabin and deck. The boat weighed an impressive 25 tonnes when complete and she carries 49 per cent of her weight underwater to give remarkable stability.

To check the soundness of the long metal plates, Cyril would belt them with a sledge hammer to check that the “ring” was a pure tone. If it didn’t ring like a bell, he selected another sheet.

The boat, SideTrax, was launched in 1985 and since then has had only three owners – Cyril, a couple who lived aboard in FNQ for a decade and the current owner, Melbourne-based ship’s master Grenville Silvester, who bought her in 2003.

"The workmanship is extraordinary," Silvester told BoatPoint, "People initially won’t believe she is steel. There are no welds every few feet because the plates used were so long and bent into place over the ribs."

"The big Dorman 120hp six-cylinder diesel installed originally drove the generator on a navy ship and is so beautifully smooth that you can rest a flute of champagne on top, start her up and take her up to maximum revs and not spill a drop," he said.

"The engine drives a big 39 inch, four-blade, bronze prop that pushes her along at seven knots while only using 10 litres per hour. With 1500 litres of diesel aboard, you can do Sydney to Brisbane in one hop."

Silvester, who spent much of his life delivering private and commercial ships around Australia and across the world, has now retired and is selling SideTrax so he and his new partner can spend some time visiting the drier parts of the planet.

As part of the $120,000 purchase price he plans to include full inshore and off-shore training in the handling and daily maintenance of the boat for the new owner. He says handling a 25 tonne, single-prop boat requires more skill than running around Port Phillip Bay in an outboard-powered tinny. "With a big, slow turning, left-hand prop, you have to learn how to handle prop walk," he explained.

Side Trax can sleep nine, has an open-plan saloon with the galley up and is fitted with a 5kVa generator to keep the electricals humming along. She is, says Silvester, perfect as either a coastal cruiser or a live-aboard.