PassageMaker - July 2018

July/August 2018 passagemaker.com 79

at Brupeg, a big steel trawler stripped

out and sitting in a yard in Queensland,

Australia, I thought, “It’s overwhelming

and I must be mad to even think of it.” We

had been looking for a trawler for years

and had even looked at some wooden

boats because the strength and size we

wanted was expensive and scarce in this

part of the world. Brupeg is a local boat

that we found in Bundaberg, Queensland,

that had been employed as a work boat

for 40 years along the northern and

eastern coasts of Australia. Brupeg was

built by Bruce and Peggy Periott (hence,

“Bru-Peg”) in Tweed Heads in 1974, as a

prawn trawler. The boat survived a pair of

cyclones before ending up on its side in

the Burnett Heads River during a flood,

after two weeks of heavy rain caused by

Cyclone Oswald in 2013.

If we were to rebuild a 57-foot boat,

we would have to get the hull for next

to nothing to make it financially viable.

So, after waiting months for the price to

come down, Damien and I decided to at

least go take a look at Brupeg. Because no

one else was interested, the price ended

up at “offers.” We drove five hours north

from Brisbane to the boat yard. Through

the locked gates of the marina we saw her

down the back of the yard in long-term

storage: blue hull, white cabin, covered

in barnacles and grime. We talked to the

seller and looked around for a couple of

hours. The size of the vessel and amount of

work it needed was formidable. We drove

back talking the entire way about what a

crazy idea it was, but also how gorgeous

the boat was.

Ultimately we offered the seller the scrap

value of the hull. This meant that if we

couldn’t make it work, we could at least get

our money back. The owner took the offer

straight away, happy to finally be rid of it.

We knew three things when we bought

Brupeg: It was the boat we wanted; we

would do everything within our means to

refit her; and failure was a possibility. Oh,

and one more thing, we knew we would

have to do it mostly on cashflow because

we didn’t have a lot of money.

THE REFIT BEGINS

We traveled up to her only on the weekends,

as it was a nine-hour roundtrip drive. Often

we would sleep covered in mosquitoes

and midges, the heat 95 degrees or more,

working all day and into the night. Then we

would drive back to Brisbane on Sunday in

time to get to work on Monday morning.

We did this for about a year, then I

was diagnosed with a condition that

meant I was out as far as working on the

boat went—on doctor’s orders, I was not

allowed to lift anything, and I couldn’t

stand for very long without fainting.

We realized how difficult a health

problem like this could make things.

Damien would be doing all the work if we

continued, and it was at least a two-person

workload. We had help from family and

friends, but the schedule and the location

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