MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

Too cold for nails for the foreseeable future I reckon, so time to maybe turn a bit of attention to the inside bits. had a (very) brief look down today, and discovered another first on the Pansy front... The world's First and only floating ice rink!.. The lovely blue tarp roof that was cobbled together has a few perforations here and there, so there's the odd drip or 3 dripping, hitting the floor, making a wee splash which then freezes instantly, have emailed the producers of Dancing on Ice to see if they'd in an interesting venue in which to embarrass and possibly (hopefully) maim some more D-List celebs, but heard nothing back.

So the only solution is going to be the Fire - reinstate the midget crematoria.

to that end, tracked down and bought a stupidly heavy cast iron Deck Collar this week - An Indestructible 'thing' which goes through the deck for the chimney to pass up and out with out setting fire to the roof (again)

One obviously flaw in that plan is that Pansy no longer has a roof, so the next job I'm going to try tick of the endless list is rebuild the coach roof and coamings etc, so I can get the fire going. Be nice to put a bit of heat in the old girls belly again.

Plan is to try do this in an IKEA stylee. Made several sets of measurements of the size of the hole, (all different - obviously!) so will just choose one at random, and build as much of it as I can at home then transport it flat packed (complete with spurious allen key) to the boat for assembly. To truly complete the IKEA experience I might even neglect to pack one critical component

Expect lots of bad words when I get there and it don't fit!

Also, being the sucker I am for punishment..... I saw an little ad on the ol'interweb for another wee fifie that is currently for sale up that Scotland. Even older than Pansy (106 years old!!), and in need of TLC. So I made the call, only to discover the owner was someone that was a follower of this blog and that we'd already had a few email conversations! Small world, and very nice to speak to you John!

Someone else looking at it this weekend though, but if they don't buy (and I hope they don't!) it I'm going to take it on, so there'll be another one to to shift down to these parts for a makeover!