Hook, Line and Sinker project boats on a budget, part 4

Similar to plenty of other boating nostalgia buffs I‘ve embarked on the restoration of one of Australia’s most famous hulls, the classic Haines Hunter V19.

The donor boat was a late 1960s reverse-chine model that has had a full composite rebuild over the past 12 months.

All the structural timber was removed and a product called Thermo-Lite, a composite board that’s lighter, stiffer and will supposedly never rot, has replaced it.

The hull is now re-gelcoated, the deck lifted, the topsides painted and the whole thing filled with foam and just like that, I’ve spent $30,000 on a 50-year-old boat that still doesn’t have an engine.

The inspiration for this pair of project boats was to examine the financial merits, or otherwise, of doing up old boats.

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It was meant to be project boats on a budget, but clearly I was in trouble on that front.

Once that realisation dawned on me, I decided to go all in. Gippsland Composites had done such a beautiful job of the hull, so it would be a travesty to mess it up by going cheap for the rebuild.

Korumburra-based GM Marine Stainless took care of the bling for $4500. Cover Craft in Bayswater did covers and clears for $1800. I then shipped the boat back home to Tassie for its engine and final fit-up.

Choosing the power needed for a Haines Hunter V19 makes for an interesting conversation. The minimum requirement would probably be around 115hp, and as far as maximum goes, well, you can write your own cheque.

The team at Gippsland Composites claimed this boat was strong enough to take the new V8-engined Yamaha 425 XTO. However, sanity prevailed and I fitted an outboard engine I’d come to know and love, the longshaft Yamaha F200 with digital controls, for $28,430.

One of the features that had drawn me to this boat was the period-looking teak and glass windscreen.

To me, it conjured images of classic European speedboats on the Mediterranean, laden with glamorous women in sunglasses.

Keeping the classic look of windscreen proved to be a bit of a pain, with the modern lines of the rest of the boat making it look out of place.

I’d decided that more teak was needed to develop a theme, and a friend with a joinery shop kindly offered to help.

We added an instrument binnacle, seat box door, bait tank lid and the crowning glory, a teak picture frame around the window in the live bait tank, all made using 25-year-old South African teak. Very nice.

The rest of the fit-up I did myself. It took weeks.

For the Haines Hunter V19’s equipment fit-out, I pinched the one used for the big Bar Crusher 780 Hard Top that we’ve used on Hook, Line and Sinker.

It’s amazing how much stuff goes into a modern offshore boat; sounder, deck wash, bait pump, bilge pump, trim tabs, anchor winch and more.

We’re fortunate to have had a long association with BLA. Its website is a great tool when it comes to fitting out a boat – all you need is time, and in my case, an extra $15,000.

Launch day arrived and the newly christened The Saint slid into the water.

The first day of a sea trial of a rebuilt project boat is always one of the most nerve-racking, but equally thrilling, events.

It’s when all the decisions made along the journey come home to roost.

And because we’re blokes, the first and most important thing to do is mash the throttle and see how fast it will go.

I had expected the Haines Hunter V19 to be quick but this was ridiculous. Opening the taps, it smashed through 30 knots, past 35, then 40, and continued climbing.

The engine was spinning an 18-inch prop, and some pundits suggested the pitch might be a bit steep. But as the Yammie topped out at 6000rpm, The Saint was rocketing along at 46 knots – quick for any boat.

To prove the point, Andrew and I had a race in which The Saint won comfortably. By this point, smugness had replaced my nerves.

The next few days were spent filming and getting to know our boats and their many features.

The Haines Hunter V19 deserves its reputation. Its offshore ride quality is excellent, and The Saint travels soft and dry.

It’s also extremely quiet, thanks in part to the Yamaha F200 but also by virtue of the foam-filled floor that insulates against sound.

’s economical cruise speed is 21 knots at 3200rpm, with the F200 sipping 17.0 litres of fuel an hour. That equates to around 2.4 kilometres a litre giving a theoretical range of 430 kilometres from the 180-litre tank.

I cruised back to the ramp with a warm feeling inside, enjoyed a beverage from the built-in Engel, marked a school of fish on the Humminbird side-imagining sonar, and congratulated myself on a job well done.

Yes, I’d spent $82,000 on a 50-year-old boat, but this was a moment to savour. Then I caught up with Andrew.

Talk about highs and lows – this project boat caper is full of them. And I must admit, my journey with the Haines Hunter Tri-Hunter has included more lows than highs.

In fact, I am currently a broken man. And so is my boat.

I’ll start this story with a high; the day of the post-restoration sea trials. Talk about being excited – for the first time in years, my mighty little Tri-Hunter was ready to roll.

The Tri-Hunter was sporting a racy new 115hp Yamaha VMAX SHO. It had been fitted out at my local Yamaha dealer, Lewis Marine in Hobart, with all the good stuff including dual Humminbird Helix sounders with side imaging and a Minn Kota electric trolling motor on the front, SeaStar hydraulic steering, the best batteries and battery management systems money can buy, and plenty of other pumps and switches and bits and pieces.

Despite the size of the fit-out, the team at Lewis Marine took only a week to complete it.

I also tapped the skills of a fibreglass wizard to finish the Tri-Hunter in Flo-Coat, and added a metal bump rail that brought (and held) the whole thing together.

I then had the Haines Hunter Tri-Hunter wrapped. This is something I can highly recommend because as well as making the whole thing look like new it drags the eye away from some of the wonky bits that go with the territory of rebuilding a 1970s-era boat.

I company I used for the wrap is called FishWreck, and dealing with it has been great. These wraps also last – the one on Beast 2, a 25-foot Bertram project boat that we still own, continues to look good four years on.

The Tri-Hunter’s finish touch was to send a template for the SeaDek foam flooring that will be used to grip up the casting platform to Queensland-based Machine IT, which would turn the design into a 3D work of art.

Everything was going along superbly, and soon I’d be able to go fishing.

In contrast to Nick’s big spend, the budget for my Tri-Hunter rebuild had just ticked over $50,000 including the rebuild and repower, electronics and steering, the wrap and the SeaDek.

Would I ever get that money back from selling the boat? Probably not. But it still stacks up well when you consider what a new boat would have cost.

And this was now practically a new boat.

My sea trials were a huge success. I couldn’t believe the Tri-Hunter’s ride through choppy conditions where it proved very dry and extremely smooth.

The high-performance Yamaha gave me a top speed of 40 knots, and at a much more comfortable 20-knot cruising speed it was virtually making fuel instead of using it.

The boat handled better than I could have hoped, and I was on a very big high.

Next was a wide-open throttle race between my Tri-Hunter and Nick’s hideously expensive and boring V19.

The venue was a Tasmanian lake that was home to a water-ski club – its flat water meant we’d get a good sense of top speed as we held both boats at WOT.

Again, I was happy with the performance. The 115hp Yamaha VMAX SHO’s acceleration was unbelievable; so much for four-stroke engines being sluggish at the start!

I was surprised by how Nick’s boat performed, but mine still topped out at 40 knots, which in a small open boat is fast enough.

The next day we were on the road again, driving our boats down to Coles Bay on Tassie’s stunning east coast with the plan to fish from one another’s projects.

We’d anchored up my Tri-Hunter and headed to sea in the Haines Hunter V19. We didn’t catch a thing, but Nick’s boat performed well. It felt very solid and … yawn … soft riding.

When it was time to jump into my boat, I noticed the SHO’s performance seemed a bit off.

Heading back into the jetty, I crashed into its pontoon despite giving the outboard engine plenty of reverse. Clearly, something was not right.

Then, as I drove the boat onto its trailer, I heard a nasty cracking noise.

It turns out the Tri-Hunter’s starboard hull was full of water, which explained the lack of handling.

How it got there was via two very large cracks in the hull bottom that, as we pulled the boat onto the trailer, had water cascading out of them. I almost had tears cascading out of me.

It was a dark time. I figured the whole thing was a write-off.

After a fair bit of soul searching, I took the boat to South Hobart-based Channel Fibreglass.  It identified why the failure had happened – the trailer’s rollers provided no support for the keel.

The restored boat, now much heavier than the original, was distributing its weight on the side rollers. Because I towed the boat around 600km in those first few days, the stress the rollers had placed on the hull meant it eventually popped.

In hindsight, the boat could have done with significantly more reinforcement added between the stringers early in the restoration process. I also reckon that the decision to do the whole rebuild with the hull sitting on the trailer contributed to the catastrophe.

So what’s next? The Tri-Hunter is being fixed, but I will need to buy a new trailer for it.

Once that’s done I’ll take it fishing and hope like hell it stays solid.

Would I do a rebuild of a 50-year-old boat again? In short, no, it’s too big a job.

What didn’t help was that I’d I tried to cut corners and save money, and it’s come back to bite me.

That is a lesson I hope I can pass onto others.

Would I do another project boat? Absolutely. I can’t wait for what’s next.

In the meantime, though, I’ll just put the Tri-Hunter experience behind me.