Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

It has been another busy week up here at macduff, the chippys have been down and completly redesigned the fishroom. One of the problems we had was that the boxes we use were smaller, than the one's that they used to use when the boat worked from Scotland, so the boxes never fitted tight into the hold space. So now with the shelves replaced with new one's the boxes now fit snugly in place, so now when we are out in poor weather the boxes will be more secure in the hold.

The engineers have also been busy, with many of our old seacock pipes having been replaced with new, the welders have been kept busy with the many jobs that were needed on our steelwork and we have had all the hanging blocks taken off the boat, with the sheeves being built in the shed and new pins put in.

With us being up in Scotland we were also able to get the man up from newbury desiels to fix our electronic engine controls, which have been out of use since they went haywire out to sea in Febuary. We had been using the back up morse lever controls since then, but they are not so sensitive as the electronic one's and we will be glad to have them working again as we can control the boat from three different positions, which makes maneuvering at sea far easier.

The new shaft is in the shed being turned up but with it being such a large lump of steel it can only be worked a few hours at a time, as the heat from the the milling could warp the the shaft, but hopefully it will be ready by the middle of next week.

The hull has been striiped of paint and sanded, the paint gang have been up on the top deck this week painting the masts and the wheelhouse. they are hoping to start the hull next week when the shipwrights have finished their work around the hull.