33ft Swiftcraft custom. Rebuilt from the keel up, watertight, and under her own power.

Black and white period photograph of three 33-foot naval utility boats stowed in cradles on the upper deck of a Royal Australian Navy ship, with practice torpedoes and mines on the deck alongside. Pennant markings SB3335 and FUB330 are visible on two of the hulls. — Three of the class stowed on deck: the Seaboat (SB3335), the Fleet Utility Boat (FUB330) and, at right, a Harbour Personnel Boat. Believed to be the same boat, at left. Period photograph, via the Sydney Harbour History group.

Black and white photograph of PLATYPUS 3311, a Royal Australian Navy 33ft fast utility boat, running fast past Walsh Bay on Sydney Harbour in January 1988, with the Harbour Bridge and the city behind her. Uniformed crew are visible in the open cockpit aft of the wheelhouse. — PLATYPUS 3311, a boat of the same family, running past Walsh Bay on 26 January 1988. She was based at HMAS Platypus, the submarine depot at Neutral Bay. Photograph via the Sydney Harbour History group.

A Royal Australian Navy displacement workboat, taken back to bare glass and rebuilt. Faired, painted and antifouled. Shafts, props, rudders, steering and V-drives in and coupled, twin petrol V8s going in now, systems and ground tackle following. She drives and she steers. What is left is the fitout and the topcoat, which are the parts you would want to choose yourself anyway.

She is being offered as a syndicate. There are eight shares in her and four are available. Doug and I keep the other four, and we finish her ourselves, in the shed she was rebuilt in. A share is $10,000, and it buys an equal eighth of a finished boat: equal time on her, and an equal split of the running costs, approx. $1,000 a year per share. See Annual maintenance for the full breakdown.

Snapshot


Length	10.3 m
Beam	approx. 3.3 m
Hull	GRP
Power	Twin Volvo Penta 5.7 GI-FF
Lying	Shell Point Marina, Sydney
Fitout	By the owners, in the shed
Delivery	Under her own power
Offer	4 of 8 shares
Per share	$10,000
Running costs	approx. $1,000 p.a. per share

Built for the Navy, over-engined on purpose

Swiftcraft built three 33-foot GRP boats for the Royal Australian Navy: the Seaboat, with no cabin; the Fleet Utility Boat, with a folding windscreen; and the Harbour Personnel Boat, with a hardtop. They ran with pennant numbers in the 33-hundreds, stencilled white on grey, and they worked out of HMAS Melbourne, HMAS Platypus, HMAS Creswell and the Fleet Support Unit through the 1970s and 1980s. One of them, PLATYPUS 3311, was photographed on Australia Day 1988 running past Walsh Bay with the city behind her.

They were displacement hulls, and by the account of the men who ran them, deliberately over-engined for the boats they replaced. Twin turbocharged Perkins T6M six-cylinder diesels drove through V-drives. One former coxswain remembers never touching the wheel: you steered them on the throttles.

She is a workboat shape and it shows: 10.3 m on a 3.3 m beam, drawing 0.9 m, with the deep forefoot and long run of a hull built to be launched into a seaway and get people home, not to plane across a flat harbour. That is worth understanding before you plan a fitout. She will be sea-kindly and she will be heavy, and she will never behave like a modern cruiser of the same length.

This hull came out of that program, built around 1970. She still had her original Perkins diesels when the project started, and she still has the Walter V-drives and the original bronze steering chamber that came with her. She is registered today as Jessie II.