water reflections Part.6
By now Dad had been offered the orange Aquastar and offered me the Starfish to buy. It was tempting as she was fast and with a good, nearly new, engine in her. However, we didn’t buy her. I don’t like buying from family and friends if I can help it, she was sold and the Brinkliner put up for sale. Stacey and I looked around for a long time for the second version of the Galloper, we put a wanted add out for an Aquastar, Lochin or Bullet and had replies from several people. We had a couple of Bullet 38’s offered to us in Scotland and went to view one. That is another tale in itself!
A while later we were offered an Aquastar in Rhyl North Wales. She was an old boat and needed work but the engine was fairly new and clean with low hours. She was also cheap enough that we could afford to buy her and still have a deposit for a house. With nothing better offered to us within our budget we went ahead and bought her. We spent a few months working on her when we moved the wheelhouse door over, put new windows in and generally bought her up to scratch. We did lots more work to her over the course of the next 5 years that we owned her including updating electrics, a new spray cover, having the hull spray painted and the engine reconditioned to name a few things.
The Aquastar served us well over those years. She had her ups and downs, but she offered space and sea keeping speed that the Brinkliner couldn’t. The cod fishing was good over the next few winters and this made life easier. The roker were not only getting more plentiful but closer to home too. They also became a year-round standby for us. The hound fishing was good but tope proved to be a problem. The numbers were ok for the first year or two but then the numbers declined dramatically. Although this was a pain, we could change our offshore trips to target bass from June/July time into the autumn and had great success with them. The Aquastar may have been faster than the Brinkliner but with an average cruising speed around 12-14knts it meant over 2.5hrs to reach the banks we normally fished for the bass. I was pushing to get offshore bookings in throughout the winter too. The weather restricted what we could do a lot more at this time of year but we had some cracking days on the cod at this time. We took a run off there for an article in Boat Fishing Monthly with just a few of us aboard. Once again, I was joined by Uncle Paul (Maris) as well as Dave and Jim who would be doing the article. Myself and Paul cleared up that day with a dozen doubles between us many around 15/16lbs.
Speed isn’t everything by all means and I will happily plod around at 12 knots if I’m not going far and it means I will arrive at a good time of tide. However, this isn’t always the case and one year in particular we often had to steam some 15-20 miles along the shore to reach the best fishing inshore. This would be a particular problem when pushing the tide and speed could be down below 10knts so best part of 2hrs steaming on an inshore trip. When all of the boats are slow this isn’t an issue but when everybody else steams past several knots faster, then for the good of the business I felt the need for speed.
While we had the Aqaustar we had a lot of other things going on ashore too. Shortly after the boat was launched Stacey and I got engaged. Stacey had also been offered a job operating a launch service that the local yacht club have. This would mean she would be working in Mersea and on the water so she took it. Over the course of the next year we would get married and buy our first house too. Moving into the house and our wedding coincided perfectly. The only thing that spoiled it for us was the loss of my dear old Nan just a few months before. I would have loved her to have been there but we did get married in Scotland and I wore a kilt as was her wish, she was originally from Cambuslang. Shortly after our marriage Stacey suffered some health problems and her work signed her off until it was sorted. When she was signed back to work, they promptly sacked her and she was devastated.
Stacey found other work and I carried on running the boat and doing the carpentry in the week but Stacey had enjoyed her dream job for just a few short months before it was taken away from her. Stacey is a determined young lady and wasn’t going to give up that easily. We looked around for a while and eventually purchased a Matlow 21 which we stripped out and re-configured as an open launch. I won’t go into all of the details but over the course of the last 8/9 years the boat has had several re-fits and engines and is better now than ever. Stacey built her business up over several years and was able to rely on the income of the boat alone. Now certified and nationally recognised for ‘Learning Outside the Classroom’ and with several published books along with the other schemes my wife can come up with the Lady Grace, named after my nan, has evolved to offer boat trips and much more.
keep an eye out for part.7 in a couple of days time.
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call Scott Belbin on 07956411528