SPACE TO BREATHE

You don't get this amount of space on modern boats, and a nice big engine room to wander around in trying to work out what all the pipes and valves do.

THE CITADEL

From this angle the wheelhouse looks to be a nice safe place to be in heavy weather !!

A PASSION FOR FISHING BOATS

It's a strange thing this passion for old boats,most people I am sure would look at an old fishing boat and think that it was a depressing ugly piece of old wood and scrap iron,and why would anyone want to preserve it !!!!

If I was rich I am sure I would have a collection of them in the same way that some people collect cars or tractors.Although I am more than happy with the one I already have to me she is a beauty and I feel very lucky to have her.I just wish she was a bit closer than 650 miles away.

But despite that progress is being made ,the deck has all been caulked down the starboard side and the bulwarks painted ,the inside of the hold and forepeak hull timbers have been treated with wood preservative ,which they can smell about 300 meters away !!! There is very little sign of any wood rot in the entire boat ,which shows how well these boats were built , originally the inside of the hull was soaked in creosote.

Back here in Oxfordshire I am still very busy building the interior which is going very well.So one day when it all comes together I hope to have a very cosy and interesting boat that I will be able to spend plenty of time aboard watching the world go as I paint and scrape and paint and scrape etc....

Galley

Galley construction

This is my test assembly of the galley, it all went together surprisingly well !! So now I can carry on and build the rest , I have also put on two different types of light to see how they look.
I wish I had more space so that I could assemble the whole lot in one go.

Last Saturday I thought I would have a break from woodwork and pay a visit to my favourite and mother of all wooden ships "HMS Victory". I must have been on this ship 20 times !!! but I am blown away each time. For anyone who likes boats ,the Historic Dockyard is a truly amazing day out . I even saw my other favourite the "Hatherleigh" a converted North sea Trawler owned by Pindar, and based in Portsmouth.

Galley Bulkhead

Saturday I started on my first bit of cabin section , this is going to be part of the galley wall.

I have developed this plan that I can make the whole interior of the boat in a modular form so that each section will be made complete with all the electrical conduits pre-installed ,doors and floor supports fitted , panelled and painted and designed so that the whole lot will pass down through the deck hatch and slot together inside the original fishroom. I have given this an awful

lot of thought so I hope it works out.

Another reason for doing it this way is as it will bolt together it can be altered if need be without major reconstruction or for major hull or machinery repairs.Also with be being so far from Lochinver I can still work on buidling the interior without having to make long expensive trips to Scotland.

Lady Jane visit

This Saturday I paid a long overdue visit to Tim and the "Lady Jane".And enjoyed an extremely relaxing and enjoyable afternoon on board chatting with Tim and Fred .I was very impressed with the huge amount that has been achieved over the last three years with L.J looking pretty good.

Tim gives a very good tour and made me feel very welcome with plenty of tea and a good lunch.

It was very interesting to compare the differences of wooden as opposed to steel vessels and the problems and challenges of restoration and sympathetic conversion of both types.Tim seems to be doing a really fantastic job .

I hope I will be welcome to make a return visit , and look forward to Tim visiting the "Strathspey " one day .

Second Anniversary

30th of August marks the second year of my ownership of the "Strathspey II" and it also happens to be my sons birthday ( 18 this year which is very scary) .
Even with my absence most of the time, a lot has been done on the old girl,and soon she should start to look a bit better !!!
This photo is the very last day she went fishing and the first time I saw her, and I decided that there was no way I was going to buy this smelly dirty old piece of junk!!!!

Aft Deck

Another view from the gantry, you can see Edward in shadow perched on it.

Deck

View from the wheelhouse gantry,at the moment work is slowly progressing on caulking the deck ,and stripping and painting the Bulwarks.

Nice solid wheelhouse

I have been away for a couple of weeks in Italy , so I shall just add on a few extra pics.

My First Door

I am feeling very pleased with myself, this is my first cabin door and the first door I have ever made.All properly tongued and grooved.

The timber Ihave used is Red Meranti which is supposed to be more eco friendy than some of the traditional mahoganies with the added benefit of being a lot cheaper.

the purpose of making just one is to check out the proportions before making any more,so I keep sitting looking at it thinking it is to small or to narrow or not tall enough etc.etc and trying to imagine walking through it. Basically thinking about it to much( A bit sad really)

A bit of woodwork

I have started cutting my first bits of wood ,the bits leaning against the wall should become my first cabin door !! I thought I would make one to check that the size is about right .After this I shall make up some cabin bulkheads to see how these look as well. I have been drawing up all the new bulkheads and cabin layouts for weeks so it is good to make something for a change.

Here is another converted Trawler alongside the Strathspey , She is an older boat that has been very well converted and of Scandinavian origins.

I must also mention the "40+ Fishing Boat Association who do a fantastic job in keeping an eye on what is going on in the fishing industry and it's rich history of the boats and all the people connected with it. If you become a member at very reasonable cost (Pretty cheap at £ 10 quid a year)and will receive an excellent High quality quarterly magazine . they have a web site at www.homepages.mcb.net/40fba Give it a go !!

Fisherman may be very good at their jobs ,but when it comes to re-upholstery they haven't got much of a sense of it!!! I think I might throw this in a skip.

Here is a before and after as Tim knows it takes a lot of work to get to this stage, 37 years of paint ( they just put paint on paint/rust and anything else) it took two of us four days just to do one side.And rust dust is somthing else!! it seems to be attracted to humans. I still think needle guns are wonderful pieces of equipment.

Here is my large and very powerful anchor winch it is powered by a twin cylinder Lister diesel which is very easy to start.I found it on the "Boats and Outboards " site it came with two huge anchors and a couple of tons of chain.

One thing I keep agonising over is whether I should put some portholes in the hull,for me this is a difficult decision due to originality.I have seen some truly dreadful trawler conversions some with large equally spaced portholes with polished brass rings .If I put them in to give me something to look out of I need them to look almost if they should be there in a discreet sort of way. What does anyone think?

Builders Plate

This is the original builders plate and bell ,the bell is engraved with the Strathspeys original name "Orcades".Local opinion is that she should remain the Strathspey rather than revert to an Orkney name !!!!

The Builders plates in Buckie were apparently made by the local coffin plate maker ,I do not know if this is true ?

The underside of the whaleback has come up incredibly well ,I thought this was terminal as the corrosion was so heavy

It looks a bit like a crime scene

And this is our very silly dog Daisy,she is ten and very demanding and greedy but quite lovable

Two of our four cats ,the one on the left is Lucy she's the mum of Hattie on the right

I don't know what I am looking for but the romper suit looks good !!

The steel deck beams have come up well thanks agai to the needle gun and some Latvian tenacity.

The wonders of the needle gun ,the wheelhouse has come up a treat after 37 years of paint and rust have been cleaned away and given plenty of coats of red oxide, nearly already for undercoat and topcoat.Work has also started on the deck.

This French trawler was one of the many foreign boats that use Lochinver to land their catch,which is then shipped back to France by lorry.Most of the fish coming in here goes abroad as all the large boats seem to be either Spanish or French.All the local boats are small and mainly catch shrimp and are very few in number.Fish quotas and decommissioning have done for the rest

July 7 th.We made the thirteen hour drive from Oxford to Lochinver ,and once into Scotland the drive North of Glasgow is one of the best I have ever had,fantastic scenery , roads , lack of traffic,sunshine and not a speck of rubbish to be seen any were.Also we had five days of Sunshine although I spent most of the time in the hold of the"Strathspey" covered in rust dust.

I have bought this watermaker ,it needs a new ro membrane ( about £ 100 )but otherwise works fine .It is quite an old model and looks quite well made . It is 110v so with a 240v system I could use a stepper as used ind the building trade for 110v power tools. it is a 6 gph but if you use two ro membranes this would double to 12

This is my paper plan ,I still have to do things the old way ,paper and pencil.

Here is a model of my proposed interior as you can see i'm not into open plan ,this is from the engine room bulkhead forward

One day this will be a cosy cabin !!

fishing boats

My lovely Kelvin engine ,in the engine room of the "Strathspey"

Lochinver

Lochinver in the Highlands of Scotland is a beautiful place incredibly remote and when the sun is shining unbeatable !!!

This is my son Edward working on the wheelhouse

This is the Strathspey with the decks cleared away, quite a nice lot of space .

when I first saw her

I have wanted a fishing boat ever since I spent a holiday on a converted mfv when I was 14 ,she was a 50ft twin screw boat , Iwould imagine Ev-Admiralty called "Willmay".After that I was smitten. Ihave messed around in all sorts of boats mostly sail for most of my life .

So this is the Strathspey ,she was originally called the "Orcades" .Built at Buckie in 1969 by George Thompson larch on oak and still in original condition apart from addditions which have now been removed.She measures up at 75' overall,21' beam and 11' draft and weighs in at 55 ton. Quite a big old lump but one of the nicest looking fishing boats I have seen.

My Boat

This first blog attempt has been inspired by "Tim Zim" of the "Lady Jane"


Nearly two years ago I became the very proud owner of the ex-fishing trawler the "Strathspey II". She is a wooden hulled Scottish built 75ft seiner the type of which are fast disapearing due to decommissioning and the economics of the fishing industry.