It's a thought most of us have had at one time or another. Walking the docks, you stop to admire a stout old work boat and the salty part of your brain asks a question: what would it really take to convert one of those?

Usually, the spell is broken by images of rusting decks, grimy bilges and uncooperative machinery. But a look around any harbor shows that these dreams do come to fruition, often in the form of a retired steel tugboat or a former Navy, Coast Guard or Army Corps of Engineers vessel purchased from government surplus and patiently converted into a yacht.

I know because I have done it, and the rewards can be great. Many of these boats are seaworthy designs that offer large spaces and a bounty of extra equipment, at prices far lower than their production-line cousins. Best of all, the result when the project is finished is a vessel that can truly be called a ship, from the steel plates on the hull to the funnel belching smoke.

While custom-built steel pleasure boats are rare, I have surveyed a fair number of steel-hulled landing craft, tugboat and fireboat yacht conversions in recent years. Among them were three steel Navy tugboats, each longer than 100 feet; two Aviation Rescue Vessels, one 63 feet and one 85 feet; a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers coastal tugboat and a steel Army landing craft. These projects aren't for everyone. But they can work well for those who want to work hard, learn their boat well and create something special while saving a few bucks.

BUYER'S MARKET

You can buy a lot of "ship" for very little money with a steel hull, often because most people are afraid of the rust. But steel is one of the best materials for a cruising yacht, and it will last for many decades when properly painted. Steel boats are strong, reliable, and can also be easily repaired almost anywhere in the world. Repairing wood, fiberglass, or aluminum takes highly-developed technology and craftsmanship, but steel can be welded by the local truck mechanic while your hull is laid up on the beach at low tide. Such easy repairs make steel boats popular in working fleets and developing countries.

With fewer interested people making competitive bids, steel hulls tend to be a buyer's market with excellent bargains to be found, especially now as the mothballed fleet left over from the Second World War is being scrapped.

Back in the 1940s, hundreds of small non-combatant auxiliary ships were built for the Navy, Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers. Some history buffs will tell you that when you count these "little ships" the Army had more vessels than the Navy.

According to a U.S. Merchant Marine listing from the 1950s, there were 1,409 small auxiliary ships, including buoy tenders, dredges, yard tugs, fleet tugs, coastal cargo freight ships, coastal cargo tankers, yard oilers, coastal ore carriers and landing craft in commission at the close of hostilities in 1945. After the war, nearly half of those small ships were sold to civilian industries, becoming city fire boats, harbor and coastal tugs or fishers. Those that remained active in the Army and Navy were finally retired in the late 1970s, and then mothballed in the various reserve fleets around the nation.

Beginning in the late 1980s and accelerating into the 1990s, most of the boats in civilian service finished their second careers and came onto the used boat market. Today, after 35 years in the mothball fleets, the remaining retired military vessels are being sold off at scrap value.

FINDING THE BARGAINS

Although they don't appear every day, you can find these bargain ships by carefully watching listings of government sales and monitoring several used military boat sites online (see links below). It won't take long to find something attractive.

In a 10-minute internet search on a Saturday morning in mid-March, for example, I found the following steel surplus vessels: a 36-foot Vehicle and Personnel Landing Craft, the type with the drop down ramp in the bow used to move troops from the transport to the beachhead, selling for "best offer;" an 85-foot Tank Landing Craft, a larger version capable of carrying tanks and light artillery, for $62,000; a 65-foot former military tug boat for $35,000; a 180-foot former Coast Guard Buoy Tender; and a 292-foot former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship for $1.2 million (needed complete re-wiring). Of course, those are just the asking prices. Often, owners are anxious to sell and you might get the vessel far cheaper.

One smart way to do a large conversion is by teaming up with some fellow enthusiasts. It takes three of four crew members to get a 100-foot tug underway, so you will need those extra hands during the restoration and afterwards when you want to go cruising. With four or five partners splitting the costs, it is also less expensive than it would be for each to buy a smaller boat of their own. Think of it as paying half as much for twice the fun.

Forming a consortium of four or more partners is easier than you might think. Many would-be mariners would like nothing better than to meet aboard a real ship every Saturday morning and, after a cup of black coffee in the galley, go to work on real machinery, in a real machine shop, weld on the deck, paint the topsides, have lunch in the wheel house discussing the upcoming cruise, and then, after a good day's work, settle in on the fantail with a beer to watch the sunset. Word of mouth about such an opportunity usually brings out those seeking real adventure.

LIVING THE DREAM

A couple of years ago I did exactly that. I was involved with the purchase of a 100-foot steel tug in operating condition that was sold at a bankruptcy auction in Southern California.

She was a former Navy Yard Tug USS Wenonah (YTB-148), and similar to the harbor tugs you might have seen in magazine photographs over the last 40 years. She had a pilothouse and smokestack on the upper deck above a large deck house, as well as a large rope "fender" over the bow, a winch forward, towing bits aft, and truck-tire fenders hung over both sides. Wenonah had a single screw diesel-electric drive with 1,300 hp available from two propulsion generators that ran two electric motors coupled to the single shaft. There were crew accommodations in the fo'c'stle for 8 to 10 sailors and two officer staterooms on the main deck, one for the Skipper and one for the Chief Engineer. A large galley and dining area was provided aft, and she had two washrooms with showers.

Our project got started when another Navy tug, USS Nokomis, which had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, was found abandoned on the San Francisco mud flats. A local tugboat skipper purchased it for $50 at a sheriff's auction and began to restore it. But because much of its equipment had been removed prior to its abandonment, and any complete restoration would mean acquiring duplicate equipment, an identical vessel was needed. Over the following few months, as word spread around the waterfront. Port engineers, licensed captains, former Navy machinist mates and port electricians began to get involved in the effort. The following Spring, we heard about the Wenonah coming on the auction block in Southern California. Three of us cobbled together our private funds and went to the auction. Although the minimum bid was stated as $25,000, we bought the vessel for $14,000.

At least four, of the six or seven enthusiasts now involved, began to travel down from San Francisco every other weekend to work on her. Through word of mouth and a few phone calls we also found former tugboat engineers who were familiar with similar engines, lived in Southern California and wanted to come help us for the fun of it. Spending another $7,000 or so, we got her refurbished and underway to San Francisco. That brought our delivered cost to roughly $21,000 – about $210 per foot for a yacht that, if built new, might cost more than $6 million to own.

As part of the package, we had all the machinery we could play with in a lifetime. The main propulsion included her twin 625 hp McIntosh and Seymour (ALCO) diesel engines, each driving a 410-kilowatt, 250-volt Westinghouse direct-current propulsion generator developing 1,636 amps at 740 RPM. These provided the power to run the twin 515 hp Westinghouse electric motors, which both fed the double input, single shaft reduction gear.

The auxiliary diesel generators included a 50-kilowatt, 250-volt DC Buda, a 35-kilowatt, 250-volt DC Norberg and an 8-kilowatt, 110-volt AC Northern Lights unit. All could power up the air compressor or the ship's battery charger. We also had two motor-operated lube oil pumps; a motor-operated fuel oil transfer pump; a dedicated hand-operated pump for each oil system; the ship's fresh-water, bilge and fire pumps; and a low-pressure air compressor. There were also deck cranes, fire hoses and just about everything else necessary to make us feel like we were going to sea on a destroyer.

LOWERING COSTS

Of course, there are always cost considerations when it comes to restoring any boat. Restoration takes work, but it also takes ready cash, as does ongoing maintenance and operations. On large boats like these, fuel and mooring costs are often at the top of the list.

Most auxiliary craft have light horsepower-to-tonnage ratios, and can continue to operate on their existing engines at reasonable fuel costs. But tugboats, because of the work they are designed to do, are usually grossly overpowered and burn a lot of fuel. We found that running those giant diesel engines would quickly bankrupt anyone at today's fuel prices.

So the next move with a tug used strictly for pleasure is to re-power it. Buying a couple of 150 hp or 200 hp diesel engines with twin shafts, which can be done for less than $60,000, can cut the fuel bill by 80 percent and free up a great deal of space for new cabins where the oversized engine rooms used to be. This would give it twin-screw maneuverability, and it would still power along at about 6 knots.

The result would be that, for less than $100,000 in startup costs – which your syndicate can split four ways – you would have a rather impressive 100-foot vessel in reasonable condition with new engines at your disposal one weekend a month.

Another cost consideration for large vessels is moorage fees. At $8 a foot, it costs $800 a month to moor a 100-foot tugboat. But there are creative solutions to this too.

One way to save on moorage is to anchor out or tie up to the levee in a river delta like the Sacramento or San Joaquin Rivers in California. Another is to join with another tug on a municipal pier where you can "hest" outboard of the other tug. Under this arrangement, you split the moorage cost and are only paying for the length of one boat, instead of two.

Start looking around and you may also find that there are many unused municipal piers that would love to have a tenant. My work takes me to various port cities on all three coasts and I have noticed that many owners of World War II steel vessels don't operate them, but instead use them for waterfront facilities, like the two tugs in Sausalito or the Buoy Tender on the Sacramento River. Having such vessels moored on any waterfront adds a great nautical feel to the yacht harbor

Photo by Captain Alan R. HugenotThe U.S.S. Potomac, the 165-foot former presidential yacht, is now cared for by the Potomac Association, an organization of volunteers who maintain the ship as a museum and classroom.

PIPE DREAM?

Articles like this often make these projects sound easy, but anyone who has spent time around boats knows this is never the case. The reality is that commissioning any large vessel, be it a production cruiser or a steel-hulled restoration, is a complicated and expensive endeavor. And older boats often require more work.

Yet proof that these projects can succeed is usually no father away than your home-town harbor. Examples can be found in just about every body of water, from the Chesapeake Bay to Lake Tahoe. In the San Francisco Bay, I can think of many.

In Sausalito, there are two steel tugboats moored in a commercial marina at the edge of Schoonmaker's Point. They form a nice breakwater for the marina and serve as live-aboard accommodations, with an excellent view of the city from the pilothouse.

In Richmond's Marina Bay there is a former Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Tugboat rigged out as a yacht and moored in a commercial marina. Over in Alameda, there is a former Navy Yard Tug, the USS Dekaury (YT-178), which came on the market in good running condition for about $62,000 and was purchased as a yacht. She is moored at the municipal pier at Ferry Point, alongside the aircraft carrier museum USS Hornet.

Up the Sacramento River near Isleton, there is the recently-retired Coast Guard Buoy Tender USCGC Buttonwood, which is permanently moored to a float at the levee with shore power. I was not able to interview the new owner, but he seems to use it as a rural retreat, launching recreational boats from the buoy deck with the crane. Watching the sunset over the bow from the wheel house must be impressive after a day out fishing for Striped Bass on the river. This "riverside cabin" cost less than building a real cabin, and came complete with staterooms, galley, dining room, boat deck, boat cranes and raised wheel house. Later, if he ever wants to relocate it, it is moveable.

A more famous steel yacht conversion is the USS Potomac. She was originally designed as a Coast Guard rum chaser, but prohibition was repealed in 1933 and she was already government surplus before her launching in 1934. President Roosevelt decided to convert her into a presidential yacht. Today, nearly 75 years, later she is still going strong. She is currently maintained and operated by a group of part-time volunteers in Oakland, California, and makes regular cruises on the bay.

And, of course, there are the USS Wenonah, the tug my original group of adventurers brought from Southern California, and her sister ship, USS Nokomis moored on the Municipal pier at the head of Clipper Cove on Treasure Island. Today the these two ships operate as an educational and historical non-profit, providing seamanship and ecological/marine biology education classes for sea scouts and high school groups. They get underway for navy and historical events in the Bay Area.

THE GO DECISION

Clearly, there is plenty of evidence that these projects can be a viable path for those who find the right vessel, calibrate their expectations and understand what they are getting into.

The key to this dream is knowledge. Before making a purchase you will need to invest the money to have the hull drydocked, and do a complete bottom plating thickness survey with ultra-sound. This will determine the thickness of the plates and which need replacement. Your surveyor can point you to the local ultra sound testing company, and the tests add expense to the hull survey. But they will tell you exactly what you are looking at. Of course, to replace the entire bottom could cost several hundred thousand dollars, which would be an automatic deal breaker.

Because the survey can be expensive, it pays to do your own work in advance. You can find out a lot by making an in-depth preliminary survey of several prospective hulls. Because it is a buyers market, no one is going to cut you out of the deal while you do your homework. In fact, your recalcitrance coupled with a continued interest may begin to erode the asking price. The current owner will know he has hooked a fish, but will think the price is keeping you from making an offer. Because real buyers are hard to find, he may start dealing.

By taking the time to check it out first, you can also be pretty sure of what you will later find in the drydock with the ultra sound testing. Most steel hulls are constructed of 1020 mild steel, but as commercial work boats, in most cases, they have been well cared for with excellent commercial bottom paint every four years. Even hulls that may be more than 50 years old often have not rusted significantly. At worst they usually only need some doubler plating welded over the top of the existing plates, and most of this will be in the foot above and below the waterline.

Many steel hulls from the 1960s and 1970s were galvanized or zinc coated after fabrication and before painting. If so, they may last literally forever, so long as their protective zinc is not scratched and their paint is renewed regularly. Since the 1980s, many newer steel boats have been coated with Devoe's Epoxy System, which is even better than the zinc plating. This literally seals the steel inside epoxy, where it will never rust.

If you do find corrosion, it will most likely occur in the "splash zone," the area just above and just below the waterline. The thing to do here is to row around the hull in a dinghy for an hour tapping and poking at the first foot above and below the proper waterline. Remember that she may be ridding higher because her fuel and water tanks are empty, which means that the real waterline might actually be three to five feet above the present waterline. Next, go onboard and check the same area on the inside of the hull. If this area of the hull is intact and in good condition inside and out, then the rest of the hull should be in better condition.

The next place to find problems is in the bilges. If the hull has been left unattended in humid climates without humidity control, you may find that there is major corrosion in the bilges under the engine room deck plating. If everything checks out so far, the next step is to get her into a drydock and run the ultra sound survey.

The next thing to do – before dry docking, if you can – is to operate all the equipment on board. If she has been sitting "black ship" on an anchorage, it may require significant effort to get from "cold iron" up to an operational level. This is especially true if, as in our case, she is hundreds of miles from home and laid up in a mothball fleet.

The best approach is to write out everything that is essential to bring the ship to life, and make a second list of jobs you would like to accomplish but are not essential. Then recruit some help, calling upon your partners and anyone else you can get. It may be a good idea to include a machinist, mechanic or engineer in your crew. When word of an exciting project like this gets out, volunteers are usually plentiful.

Bring a complete set of tools, from pipe wrenches to a portable gasoline 110-volt generator and a portable air compressor. This will allow you to charge the ships air system, which is necessary to start the diesels. You will also need plenty of Delo 400 lube oil, clean oil and fuel filters and many gallons of diesel fuel, because unused older vessels usually have empty tanks. Don't forget a good supply of oil adsorbent rags.

Start by using your portable gasoline electric generator to run the portable compressor that charges the ship's Starting Air Tank. This will allow you to start the ships auxiliary generator, after you oil it and "un-pickle" it.

While the small air compressor is filling the ships very large compression tank, you will have a couple of hours to kill. This is a good time to use a tape measure to sound the depth of all the fuel tanks on board. Be careful here, because the tanks could be full of water with only a top layer of diesel. This is condensation water, which collects in empty tanks when moisture condenses on the interior during cold weather. You don't want to start up the generators with dirty fuel.

Most engine rooms have a day tank where they keep clean fuel, and all the engine room's prime movers usually operate off this tank. Fill the day tank with the new diesel you brought aboard, and not the fuel from the storage tanks. We found that one fuel tank, still marked clearly as "FUEL OIL" and still connected to the fuel oil transfer piping, had been converted to a sewage holding tank. We were glad not to have pumped that into our clean day tank.

Starting the ship's generator should take you and a couple of friends most of a day, but if you start early on a Saturday and were smart enough to bring along experienced hands, you'll have the main auxiliary generator running and power on for the galley refrigerator, stove and oven by Saturday night. Then, you can spend all day Sunday testing bilge pumps, navigation lights and everything else while you wait for the generator to charge up the ship's main battery system.

When I helped to re-start the tug a couple of years ago, it took several of us on a series of four, two-day weekend expeditions, with half a dozen friends working day and night. But, we were finally able to get all the auxiliaries up and running and finally start the main propulsion diesels.

Let me tell you that as the funnel began to belch a steady, "puck-a-tah"¦puck-a-tah"¦puck-a-tah," all the effort seemed small compared with the wonderful sound of the ancient ship coming to life. Over the following months, the same crew faithfully continued to work for no pay as we harbor hopped the tug 400 miles up the coast, bringing her home to San Francisco.

The camaraderie of sharing the work, the cruising and the beers on the fantail afterward was, as the saying goes, as good as it gets.

Capt. Alan Hugenot is a naval architect and marine surveyor based in San Francisco, whose writing has appeared regularly in Sea Magazine, Latitude 38, The Log newspaper, 48 Degrees North, Go Boating and many other boating publications on the Pacific coast. He serves as National Chairman of the Motor Yacht Technical Committee for the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.