MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

well whadya know, we can now not only steer in a straight line and the turning circle is less than a mile now as well. In fact we can actually do U turns in a couple of boat lengths. Yup the steering is up and running, fine tuned and works like what it does on proper boats. Before that we had to do a 3(ish) point turn in the tyne, and thats half a mile wide!

So out the marina on saturday afternoon, and tie up on the waiting pontoon to catch the tide at stupid o'clock sunday morning. No2, and new recruit, to save embarrassment we'll call the lad No 4, elected to sleep on board on saturday night. and that dear friends was their downfall. For next to the marina is a pub, ok there's a pub next to every marina, not sure but I think its the law. Its probably the law that all pubs next to a marina have a number of Interesting characters in residence as well.

needless to say, when l turned up at the boat at stupid o'clock sunday morning, the crew were still tucked up in bed sleeping it off, and in their merriment left everything powered up overnight, so the batteries were little more than ballast (more on ballast later). luckily the henjin has its very own secret batteries, so starting up was not a problem, although doing the checks and odds and sods in a pitchy dark engine room was interesting.

so engine fired up, ropes off and away, hang on though where's No 2?? buggered off back to bed, albeit a different bed, the warm one recently vacated by No 4. tried to rouse him from his slumbers by opening the deck hatch above him and pee'ing on him but it had little effect other than a few muttered words about the rain.

he was finally woken from his slumbers as we hit the swell as we started to push offshore, although that too was a brief moment of consciousness, preceded by a trip to Pansy's Posh Privvy, now replete with its door once again, although minus lights, when the door fell off it broke the light switch. The life of any wood boring organisms that may of been on board were well and truly extinguished by what emanated from that area shortly afterwards. Both wheelhouse doors were pinned open to ease our pain and watering eyes as No2 was being bounced about in the dark trying to wipe his bum. OK too much information!

we've removed a couple of tons of ballast that was stashed high up in the f'ocsle and the old girl is sitting about 6" higher in the water and has had the unexpected bonus of improving handling considerably as well. So with No 2 now sleeping off the excesses in the wheelhouse we headed for the 8-10 mile wrecks. There's been that much water coming down the Tyne from all the recent rain the sea was chocolate coloured for the first couple of miles. managed to rouse the crew to action stations and first drop was off a wreck about 8 miles out, plenty of good sized mackeral but not much else. the plan was to hop the wrecks back towards the inshore rough ground. The crew weren't too keen, and glowed green at me to emphasise this so it was back inshore straight away, onto the rough ground and attempted to catch cod using the lying down on deck with your eyes closed method. At which point I guessed it was time to call it a day and give it up, so back in the marina bang on High tide. At least the batteries got recharged and we know the steering is finally sorted.

So this weeks plan is to ditch some more ballast, move some other ballast about a bit, and have another go. There will be cod aboard the Pansy soon I tell thee, even if its from the chippy on North Shields Fish Quay