MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

well not in the beginning, a bit later, well 1938 actually, Pansy BF494 was built by the Macduff Engineering Co. She was built for J Wiseman and others of Whitehills and as far as we can see, had no other owners or name/number until she was sold to a Peter Cull of Hartlepool in 1971. The dimensions given on her original registration card are: length 37' 5" (reg) 45' 9" (overall); keel 38' 7"; breadth 14' 7"; depth 6'; gross tonnage 14.88; Kelvin 66 BHP diesel.

Motor Fifie Pansy In whitehills harbour

She fished very successfully with the Wiseman family out of whitehills for many years until finally retiring.

Unsure of when she was finally decommissioned still, but she went through a few hands before she landed in ours, and went downhill for quite a while, but survived, and has had quite a bit lavished on her in the last ten years. The original wheelhouse was replaced sometime in the 1980's from what we can gather, and a first conversion to a pleasure / liveaboard took place, at which point she ended looking like this:

I have heard tell of the state she was in at this time and the decks having the watershedding properties of a tea bag, a tale which may hold more than a little truth with all the upholstery being hung out to dry on the rigging! So she lay in these state for a while, getting gradually worse and at one point was a near total loss when she went aground near the Kessock Bridge in Inverness, but she changed hands again and the previous owner set about putting her back to rights, so she was out of the water and up on the blocks for some extensive and much needed TLC, a lot of replanking, many new frames, new deck timbers, another new wheelhouse, and sadly for us, the masts were removed - something we're keen to re-instate as soon as we can find some!