From lawn to marina — the end of an era
Boat’s truck ride a watershed moment for family after 20 years of reno work
It’s the end of an era for one Auckland family as their boat, which their father has been renovating for more than 20 years, finally moved off the front lawn and into a marina.
Beach Haven resident Malcolm Steedman has been working on the family boat for about 23 years as it sat on their front lawn, upgrading it from a “handyman sailboat” worth about $30,000 to a modern cruiser worth around $300,000.
After more than a decade of sailing, the family boat needed some attention. Rainwater has seeped through screw holes and rotted the windows, Steedman said.
He decided to give the almost 11-metre boat an extreme makeover, using a marine architect and spending around $180,000 over the years.
“It’s taken so long to do because I didn’t want it to look like a handyman had built it. I wanted to make it look like it had been done professionally,” Steedman said.
“I looked around at other boats and thought I wish I could afford something like that but that was impossible. You’d see photos of other boats and think that [part] would fit here so you work it around that.”
He said it’s a relief to have the job done. “At some stage, I thought, it’s not going to get there. You . . . get sick of spending months and months sanding. All that’s behind now. It’s the easy part [now], everything is in other people’s hands, not mine.”
Steedman said the boat is a landmark in Beach Haven, with people using it as a way to give directions.
“It’s been a landmark because people say ‘you know where that boat is, well you turn up that road’. Now they’ll have to find another landmark.”
The boat holds special memories for the family too. Mid-renovation, when the plywood had been peeled off its back third, it was a great hiding place for the kids, he said. “You’d have to go and look all over the place to try and find them. They’d get in it from underneath it easy enough.”
He has memories of the family rushing out in the rain and wind to pull the covers over the boat.
And in the final unveiling, his 8-year-old granddaughter had an important job. “She was allowed to come up with me on the cabin top to help take all the covers off and unscrew all the bits holding it on. The very front of it you could see from the road, but . . . over the last few months more and more . . . was getting unveiled.”
A crane winched the catamaran off Steedman’s lawn and on to the back of a truck bound for Hobsonville Marina, where the motors will be mounted. It will stay there for about four days before it goes in the water.
Steedman plans to advertise the boat for sale “and see what happens” once he’s got it running — but not before taking a few family and friends on to the water to watch the America’s Cup action.