I bought this boat for £250 and turned it into a family cruiser

A wrecked boat that had been lying derelict in a farmyard would intimidate even the keenest restoration enthusiast, yet Rodney Green made it his mission to bring this destitute Teal 18 back to life

After moving to the South Coast during the Covid pandemic, taking redundancy and completing most of the work on our new home, I began looking around for a new project to fill my time. I’m proficient at DIY and did an electrical engineering apprenticeship in my younger years so I like to keep busy.

I also love boats, having had five different craft over 18 years, ranging from an English Harbour launch up to a Fairline Targa sportscruiser. However, semi-retirement refocused our finances so keeping an expensive boat with all its related upkeep costs was no longer an option. A cheap project boat, on the other hand, would help fill my time and get us back out on the water once it was finished. The hunt was on.

We live close to a small harbour with lots of little boats on swing moorings. I liked the look of these compact craft and wanted to find something that would be in keeping with the local setting. I’ve never fished before and always thought it sounded like quite a boring pastime.

However, after watching these little boats coming and going all day, I started to imagine myself anchored up in one of the nearby bays on a sunny day, listening to my music, eating lunch just bobbing about on the waves, trying to catch our supper. It may have been a romanticised view but it gave me the inspiration I needed!

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Gone fishing

I set about looking at small fishing boats with some style and appeal, something like a Predator Sea Angler, Sea Champion or Sea Hunter. I liked their purposeful styling and simple layouts.

Having started my search I was surprised to see just how many tired old wrecks are out there on the market, labelled optimistically as “Project Boats”. I watched endless boat restoration videos, read a book about fibreglassing cover-to-cover, and trawled through countless ads.

I became quite smitten by a Teal 18 that came up on eBay, called Catch 22. It had a traditional looking fibreglass hull that was moulded to look like an old clinker-built wooden craft. Apparently, Teal boats were built in the Manchester area between the 1960s and 1980s. The Teal 18 was one of their later models so I reckoned it must have been around 40 years old.

The boat had slipped its mooring near Morecambe during a storm, struck rocks and been holed and partially sunk. The owner had recovered the boat to a farm where it had laid unrepaired and engineless for months.

I decided to take a punt and purchased it unseen for £250 then arranged to have it transported to Dorset for another £350. The guy that delivered it was great and helped me get the craft onto some wooden pallets at home. Bizarrely we’ve kept in touch and I’ve been sending him updates ever since.

Having been on a farm for some time, the boat was in a dreadful condition. The deck was covered in soil and when I pulled up the boards, the bilges were packed with sand and mud and reeked of farm animals. I needed a small skip just to get rid of all the waste.

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The bulkheads, lockers and decks had all perished so they came out too. Thankfully, once I’d stripped everything away, the condition of the hull was not too bad. There were three holes where the rocks had pierced the fibreglass and a number of scrapes in the gel coat but structurally it still seemed sound.

Having opened her up and cleaned the hull inside and out, I left her covered for six months to allow the fibreglass to dry out completely. I used the time to do all my fibreglassing research, make some proper boat chocks and find suppliers for the marine-grade Lloyds-approved resin and materials I’d need.

Fast learner

I decided to use marine plywood for the bulkheads and lockers which I coated in resin prior to fitting into the boat. Because of the clinker hull, cutting and shaping the bulkheads to fit the precise shape of the bilges was challenging. Where I could, I used the old pieces as a template but mostly I had to re-template everything using corrugated plastic. I learned a technique I saw on the internet to pattern complex curves using heavy plumbers’ solder wire held on a strip wood frame. It worked really well!

Once I’d got them to fit, every new timber cross member, bulkhead and panel was bonded to the hull with structural adhesive and then overlaid with glass mat and resin. This meant scratching back the hull to ensure proper bonding, which is a pretty unpleasant job requiring safety goggles and a mask to stop the dust getting in your eyes and lungs.

There’s now a lot of ply in the boat. More than the original as I made a new helm console and double skinned the deck. I noticed when I stripped the boat out that most of the bilge drain holes in the bulkheads were blocked so I made these larger on the new pieces and lined them with plastic tube to stop any bilge water getting into the ply.

My overriding objective was not to cut any corners as far as safety went. The boat needed to be strong, reliable and seaworthy. This took me down a slightly costlier route, for example choosing to fit a brand new motor as well as branded parts and liberal use of fixings to secure pipes, cables and wiring, but it would have been a false economy to scrimp on the important stuff.

Safety first

I had no experience of outboard engines as all my previous boats had inboards, so I started to research and learn about larger outboards with remote controls. I didn’t want pipes, cables and wiring just thrown in, they had to be hidden or neatly secured. It was quite a mission that took me nearly three years, thousands of cups of tea and, at weekends, a few beers to keep me going.

I also owe a big thanks to my hugely supportive wife Colette, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and is still receiving treatment but nevertheless provided me with so much love and encouragement (not to mention collecting hundreds of empty yoghurt pots in which to mix my different resins).

It didn’t all go to plan, I needed to remake the cabin side glazing after using the wrong sealant. This was a costly mistake but it had to be right. As well as boat parts, I needed decent tools, such as a new wet and dry vac, jigsaw, plunge saw, circular saw, mini router and multitool.

I did outsource some new parts, particularly the metalwork items – I found a great chap in Lymington known as “Stainless Steve”. Wayne and Sarah of Boatybits, Poole, also made the cover and cushions.

Living the dream

Including the motor, I probably spent around £10,000 in total. While this was going on, I also started a part-time role at a local B&Q store with their stock replenishment team. It was (and still is) my main source of physical activity, and provides a small income to help fund my boat project.

I can thoroughly recommend it! Finally, I have to mention Highcliffe Sailing Club who helped with mounting the engine, trailering and launching Catch 22 for her post refit sea trials.

From an aesthetic point of view I think the boat looks pretty good. If you look at her close up, you can see a few blemishes but all the things that really matter, like the engine, hull, bulkheads, seating and layout, are as solid as they can be.

It may not be the biggest or flashest boat around but we’re back on the water once again and next summer I can finally live out my dream of bobbing around at anchor with a rod in one hand and a beer in the other.

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