MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

Dark nights & cold days are upon us, so, until we get the 'spacher working, its getting a tad chilly on the old girl, although a dozen litres of diesel engine purring away for a while does make the engine room nice n toasty, which is where most of the 'doing' type stuff has been done of late. So now is the time to reflect a little and plan ahead to what is, what will come to pass and what shall never be.

Looking around the ol' t'interweb for ideas and inspiration, there are lots and lots of these delightful old trawlers, MFV's, seiners, drifters and what have you out there, but sad to see that most have been sacrificed on the alter of live aboard conversion. Why oh why oh why do people do it. It seems to me there are 2 basic ways that a lot of people attack the problem of converting an old fishing boat. the 'shed' method' or the 'caravan' method

The 'Shed' Method of trawler conversion

The 'Caravan' method of Fishing boat conversion

As many boats have got the chop as part of the EU's stupid and completely wasteful decommissioning policy, the odd few have apparently been 'rescued' or god forbid, some even say 'preserved' only to suffer the indignity of having what can only be described as a shed stuck on deck. Ok we bought one with a conservatory on deck, but one that is superficial enough for us change and restore to the old girl a bit of her dignity, honest Peter it'll be gone soon!

Why do they do it? If you want a floating shed, buy a shed that, err... floats I guess. If you want a floating caravan buy a caravan that doesn't float, and go to sleep in it at low tide somewhere remote!

so, the next few months are going to be spent plotting and conniving, (yes some of it will be done in a shed - thats a wooden structure in a garden BTW) with a bit of graft chucked in the mix just for good measure. Hopefully at the end of it, we'll be heading in the right direction to get her looking proper again.

Meantime No 2 has done some stuff & drank several gallons of bovril in the process. Bovril filters have now been placed on the mugs to help him along. More paint has been sloshed on unsloshed bits in the hole, plans are a foot for new fuel tanks in the making, Can you use feet as fuel? if so keep it quiet as HMRC will slap a recreational foot use duty on them sharpish no doubt, although they may allow us to keep 40% of our feet for domestic use and be exempt from general foot duty (general foot duty?? didn't he fight along side wellington??)

This week should see the last of the refitty type stuff refitted in the hole; storage lockers to put stuff in so we can't find it again, newly mounted and re-wired 'spacher; shiny things here and there to attract spiders, that sort of thing. I may also drink bovril unattended, smoke a few fags and gossip with our nautical neighbours. Any pairs of hands at a loose end have been invited to come join the fun, Left answer phone messages for Jonathan Ross & Russell Brand, as I'm led to believe they might have an opening available. Toyed with the idea of cobbling together a radio transmitter and anchoring 6 miles off shore so they can keep in practice till january, just to piss the daily mail and it readers off as much as anything. Barack Obama has been invited also, as despite the fact he won the election, he's got to sit through another couple of months of retardisation before he can start picking up the pieces, and Clarkson has asked if he can come and hide from the lorryists for a while

ho hum, onward and sideways

Blimey, we've now got a cathedral up front, ok, maybe a small chapel, alright a nice empty, dry cabin ready to converted into something useful. finally shifted the remaining, err ballast? Still don't know why each individual 10kg pig of iron was wrapped in 2 Tesco's carrier bags, they could have had 389 green clubcard points if they'd taken them back!

wonder if I'll get green clubcard points if I take these back?

The previous conversion, obviously had 'skip' high on the list of desirables when it was first converted, we must haved chucked, sorry 'recycled' (!) 4 or 5 tons from there alone, what we inherited was this.

the previous conversion, obviously converted the forecabin to a skip!

the Caley fish box was a chain locker of sorts, and under and behind that, and the board it rested on, was a stack of scrap iron, just like the above. go figure!

so attacked it this afternoon with vigour (we'd ran out of flash and swarfega) and my back is telling me there I shifted 600tons at least. but out it all went and is now sat on deck awaiting, err... 'recycling', which might be a week or 2 before we take the boat to the err.... 'recycling centre'? (!)

but once emptied, its huge down there, I can proper stand up and everything without cracking me nut (the doctors assure me that the flat head I've developed might grow back) A cathedral as No 2 proclaimed as he sauntered up having escaped from that thing known as work

so here we go, the previously converted forecabin has now been unconverted ready for further conversion... maybe if we cut the roof off it would be a convertible?

the view back down Pansy to the saloon from the new 'cathedral'

looking good though, all the timbers are solid as a rock, right down to the hog, not bad for 70 years of neglect, they certainly knew how to build them up that scotland. looks like the gas board forgot to fill that trench in properly though.

forgot to mention, we didn't lay the foundations for an inspection pit underneath Pansy, nor did we offer any improvements to the bottom of the marina or start laying a gravel drive from the berth to the river today either... just in case anyone was wondering

*All Aboard*

No. 2 here - after the power of the Presha Washa and the efforts of Conan the Libertarian I've been able to do what I do best recently. Flouncing around with a 2" paintbrush in my hand, stroking my chin and sitting down a lot. (the best thing about sorting the engine room a tad is there are many more opportunities for the sitting down) I've toshed a bit a bit of Danboline *Cheers Cuz* on here and there and haven't managed to blow anything up. The Skipper did have to stop me painting the engine room lights white though, made sense at the time! Did stretch myself though on account of moving about down there is like playing a game of twister inside a traction engine's thingmybob. At one stage I had my leg hanging over my shoulder with one hand above, the other steadying me from below and the spare texting my stockbroker. Just got home and have realised I've painted one of eyes as well.

Prong One! We did a lot today with the power of good old aitch two Oh. We used a new chinese invention the "Hiya Presha Washa" to blast everything off of everything, the skipper caught a bit of shrapnel in the eye but he's got three eyes anyway so it's even stevens now. I of course was very good and didn't squirt water up Bobs Dads leg at any stage.

I was very quick and hawklike today as well - dunno if you know about the pipework on The Panser but at the moment the sink drains into a bucket. As it was my watch I checked the deisel engine elements and made a quick tour of the vessel - to my horror I realised the bucket under the sink was full. "The Training" kicked in and I immediately turned the tap off, commando rolled under the units, grabbed the overflowing bucket and emptied it into the sink ................................!

I don't know if you're aware of Advocado's principle - something about why 900 ton boats can float and a 2g ball bearing will sink like a stone (Concrete hulled boats - whassthaallabout?) Hang on, an advocado's a fruit or a yellow drink or a football manager - I digress. The plan for tomorrow is to take a 2 pronged approach, remove the last of the soil, gravel and ectoplasm from the engine room and "Pack the Stern Gland", I've had problems with leaking glands in the past and know what effect they can have. So how to do it? Prong 1 involves taking a high pressure jet washer down into the engine room, turning a tap on and filling the boat with water from the inside. Prong 2 involves pulling things out of the stern tube which will allow a brief but vigorous filling of the boat with water from the outside. Should be interesting!

I've always been wary of advocados they make your wee smell - or maybe that's asparagus!

Who's this Archimedes when he's at home?

**/ Skipper's Addendum /**

Avocados are a fruit pretending to be a vegetable and are therefore not to be trusted. Also Weird Al Yankovic sang a song about them. Draw your own conclusions. Archimedes however was clever.

*Running from the Press Gang*

Aye, kings shilling and all that - how could I have seen that little coin in the bottom of my Tankard (pure schpelter) while it was full of Porter? Archimedes was clever he invented the word "Pump" and "Screw" which means that we can all say the words "Fart" and "Shag" in front of our Nannas and Grandads without gettin our legs slapped. Whaddaman!

Time for a before and after! Spent the last couple of weeks down in the hole, rewiring, emptying the unspeakable bilges, cleaning the timbers and removing the mass of 'ballast' that had been stacked up right in the stern above the prop cutout and over the stern tube, must have been well over a ton and a half of assorted scrap iron, 20kg bags of blasting shot, old batteries etc.... Removed these, then discovered a huge slab of ropey concrete, although it wasn't just concrete. more lumps of scrap iron dropped every where and then concrete poured on top to bind it all together - nice! so a few hours with a kango and we can see the frames once more, and more importantly, we can get at the stern tube, which has a bit of a leak, and needs repacking. So the before picture look a bit like this...

couple of tons of ballast and rubbish to shift

what lies beneath! The back end of the engine room before we started

As she looks today. Almost done, bit more woodwork and paint needed

painting is now almost finished, but as for the tarmac on deck, think that is going to fall into the long term project category

the 'tarmacandle'

there's some wood after all!

And finally...... treasure!

Just for luck?