My wife and I had been looking for a houseboat for three years. We didn’t have a lot of money to invest, but I had a lot of building experience.  We found a "wreck" of a houseboat! $4,000 bought us a 1965 40’ x 12’ Stardust Cruiser with a 318 Chrysler and a Dana outdrive, and most importantly, one with a good hull.

The boat had been sitting at Blue Springs Dock in Kingston, Tennessee on Watts Bar Lake for 23 years, and hadn’t been moved except to have the hull re-coated three years earlier.  The gentleman we had bought it from was 75 and had not used the boat for many years.  We remodeled it over the winter at the dock.

Alabama Houseboat

These older boats have 2 sets of double bunks and a small head with a good size kitchen and a 8’ x 10’ living area.  The first thing we did was tear out one side of bunks and put in a full size shower and a wonderful storage closet. which contains an 18 gallon water heater. This is real nice in the spring or fall on a cool morning.  I would suggest this to anyone to do when remodeling a houseboat.  The paneling in most of these boats is ugly.  We replaced it with tongue and groove 6inch pine boarding. Its easy to work with and stained, its beautiful.  The flooring was replaced with indoor/outdoor carpet, and the kitchen and bathroom was covered with easy care vinyl flooring. The outside of the boat was faded blue and white metal siding and we repainted it crimson and white with enamel paint.

When looking for boats make sure you check out the engine and outdrive.  If not you will end up doping what I had to do.  The engine had run years ago, but not now.  Try to find a 1965 motor these days, or a good outdrive. You can’t do it. We ended up pulling the boat out of the water and setting it up on blocks for a month.  Pulling the motor can very a lot of work, but not bad if you use a 20 ton boat lift. When you pull one you need to also pull the outdrive off and have both of them completely rebuilt. The power system had to be rewired with a new fuse box for the 110 volt system. Also, a generator was installed. Portable power is important when you are sitting in a cove for a weekend of fun.  I put in an inexpensive 2500 watt generator. The only problem was, it was loud. One way you can quiet these down is to run the exhaust through a car muffler, but don’t run the pipe in the water, it overheats the engine. The best thing to use is a power inverter. It will run most anything you have on the boat and you can recharge the batteries when you run the generator. A 5000 BTU air conditioner and portable fans do a great job of cooling the boat.

Most houseboats remain on the same lake you buy them-BUT NOT THIS ONE! We ended up driving it up the lake, 50 miles and putting it on a transfer truck and moving it to Norris Lake in eastern Tennessee.

The entire project cost approximately $9,000, with most of the expense going to rebuild the engine and outdrive and to move the boat.  This type of rebuild is inexpensive if you do most of the work yourself and know basic building.

Remember, these boats drive like a barge, so speed is not important. The boat is named "THE CRIMSON TIDE, USS ALABAMA, SSBN-731 after the nuclear sub "Alabama" It has three flag poles with the University of Alabama flags flying, and it drives all the Tennessee Vol fans crazy!

Thanks to:
Terry Carpenter, Clinton Tennessee. "Roll Tide"

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