Diary of a Deckhand

The distant lights of our destination seem to tease us, seemingly never getting any closer in the blackness. Checking the green glow of the radar screen I can see the land mass slowly getting closer, the blinking cursor on the plotter agreeing that we were indeed moving. The pulsing ground swell lifted us and carried us onward towards the shore, grabbing binoculars I scan for the two harbour pier end lights, a red and green beacon of safety. Eventually we spot them ahead of us amidst the blaze of orange sodium and five minutes later Hazel guides the boat from the dancing water into the stillness of the harbour.
Tying up outside of the Karin who arrived the day before us, we disappear off to bed to await our turn on the ship lift in the morning.

Leaving Orkney


Traffic in the Firth


Sunset over the Moray Firth


The shiplift is a cradle that is lowered into the water on a platform controlled by four giant winches, their thick black grease laden cables looping around pulleys over a foot across. Slowly we are pulled from the water and towed to our space in the ship yard. I descend the long ladder to the ground and get my first look at the hull without the aid of my diving gear for over a year. Barnacles encrust the keel and engine cooling pipes, their white shells stark against the dark antifoul paint.

A boat out of the water always looks strange to me. Hulking, ungainly but at the same time poised like a ballet dancer on point. The sheer size of our hull is so apparent, and yet the whole thing is balanced on a strip of wood 12 inches across.

Fraserburgh is a strange town. The town centre seems to be a classic from a geography textbook. A doughnut town – the centre hollow as all the shops have moved out of the centre, or in this case been superseded by an enormous supermarket on the outskirts. Eight or so superpurser fishing boats lie hibernating in their dock each boat having replaced ten boats the size of ours. They go to sea and catch a years worth of fish in a matter of weeks. The docks are still alive, but their pulse is muted.
The whole place has an organic feel to it, that it has slowly grown up over time and will never stop growing. Sheds became workshops, workbench wood stained black with oil from a thousand engine repairs. Paint workshops with walls a foot thick, four inches of brick and the rest a thousand layers of paint, each one a record of which boats have been up on the slipway to be repainted. The wall is never the same colour two days running, changing like a chameleon.
One of the best thing about Fraserburgh is the huge seals that live in the harbour. Three or four of these huge beasties float around between the trawlers, you suddenly become aware you are being watched and find a set of nostrils like a twelve bore shotgun and some big puppydog eyes looking at you from the murky water.

One of the huge Pelagic pursenetters


Fred's wall.






There are many deeply unpleasant small things in life. It seems this week i have been witness to a decade worth of them. The stumbling grumbling fumbling stagger of the half asleep, roused from the warm depths of the duvet by a bladder about to explode stepping outside to visit the loo wearing only socks on your feet and standing on one of those small fluffy paint roller heads that has been left outside and is now sodden in water that is defying physics and managing to be below zero and yet still liquid enough to squish between your toes. A freezing cold toilet seat, so cold you worry your backside might actually stick to the seat which appears to be crafted from solid ice. When you sit down it does something primordial to you, bypassing your brain and going directly to your vocal chords which it gives a quick kick. Someone in the next cubicle just made a strangulated squeak, you wonder if they are ok....until you realise you are alone in there and it must have been you. If your bum sticks, what do you do? You cant rub the stuck bits to warm them up. Maybe think warm thoughts, or hope someone will feed you curry through the keyhole.
Snow flakes are in a hurry, no meandering slowly down, rather they are thrown at the ground with the fury shown by a two year old child discarding their half eaten lunch. They get blown under your hood and manage to even get inside your jumper, a cold dribble the evidence of the warm blooded murder of a snowflake by the alleged heat of my skin.

A visit to Aberdeen on the bus allows us to raid M&S and buy some new underwear, the bus windows seemingly never having been washed made me imagine this is how the world would look to your knee if you were wearing tights.

The Valkyrie has not always been called as such, but has had two previous names – the Bounteous Sea immediately prior to us buying her, and before that the Honeydew. Based in Fraserburgh i wonder how many times she had made the journey past the lighthouse on the end of the breakwater and how it would feel for such a grand old dame to be back in her old haunts. Irony had it that in her hey day she was the highest earning boat out of this port, and one berth behind us on the slipway was the current highest earner – the Valhalla. It seemed that so many people knew our boat, had been on her years ago under her previous names. A retired celebrity making a rare appearance to her public.

Nekkid boat - all the paint stripped off.


I found myself pondering how the boat would feel about her current role in her life. Previously travelling the world, working hard in rough seas bringing home the catch. Maybe a boat could feel fear as her colleagues suddenly vanished from the quayside, their owners having sold the quota and the boat off to be broken. Fishing fleets that once left to search for fish were no more. Only the lucky survived, i realise how rare she must be to be still in a working environment, no rich persons plaything or left to rot at a quayside, a white elephant swallowing water and money. Maybe being a diving boat is a far cry from being a fishing boat, but i suspect it is an acceptable retirement for anyone.
People who don't own boats, their contact being the occasional ferry journey or even less will maybe struggle to understand the affinity a person feels to a boat. It somehow becomes an extension of yourself. I became Valkyrie, over the radio we are Valkyrie, not Hazel and Helen. To other boats, we are Valkyrie. We care for her, make sure she is working correctly and looking good. We are the embodiment of the boat. I wonder what will happen to her when she comes to the end of her life with us. By the standards of modern fishing boats she is an ancient relic, outdated and obsolete. By dive boat standards she is excellent for what we want, fitted out so well and now with so many of the things divers want. Having had the decades of paint taken off the hull with a power washer with a rotary head on it revealed a beautifully sound set of wooden planks. Four days were spent in the driving snow, sleet and rain. Each pass of the jet of water sent flakes of paint flying, mainly into my eyes, nose, mouth, ears and somehow through the five layers of fleece and into my bra. Hands so cold they become useless claws, the pain so intense as the blood returns for the tenth time in a morning. The best thing about this was being let loose in a scissors lift – a motorised platform which can lift you forty feet into the air to allow you to reach all the difficult bits. I loved driving the platform around the boat and suddenly being king of the castle above everyone else. The fact that it bounced when you walked was great fun, but an opinion not shared by Hazel who was less than keen on heights and didnt appreciate me showing her quite how much they bounced. The hurry was to allow the greatest chance of getting a decent day to get paint back onto the bare wood. Once the upper hull had been stripped back using the power washer it was taken back to wood with heat guns to give a totally sound surface for the new paint to stick to. A layer of grey primer, a layer of grey undercoat and then her final coat of glossy green.

Winter plumage - the gray primer and later another coat of gray undercoat


Green, but no white line or antifoul


At last, back to normal


Shiney Prop




We also went up to the lighthouse museum which stands on Kinnaird Head above the town. A trip to the top of the lighthouse was the highlight of the tour.