Of course, Lady Jane gives me plenty to opportunities to practice and improve my skills. And I'm certainly not the first to be charged with her care.
The fishing trawler Judith - some time before her conversion to Lady Jane.THE DISTANT PAST
Lady Jane was first launched in Ostend, Belgium on April 27, 1963, and was assigned to work the brutal North Sea. She has been around for more than 40 years, and like her new owner, she's had a diverse life.
Lady Jane was originally known as Z.431 Judith, named after St. Jude, a statue of who remains on board to this day. Judith was first launched as one of a handful of fishing trawlers. When she finished her fishing career, she was used as a standoff for oil rigs. Judith was later moved to Ireland where she went unused for a few years. It was there that she had various items removed, including her portholes.
Judith was purchased in 2000 and brought to England to be used as a survey vessel and re-named Lady Jane. New owners later began work converting her from a fishing vessel to a live aboard. When Lady Jane was lifted out of the water she weighed 182 tons. After her fishing gear was removed and the fish hold was stripped, she weighed-in at a svelte 155 tons.
On her maiden voyage under my watch, the bow rode high and I have since fitted her with several tons of additional iron ballast.
FULL CIRCLE
It is probably fitting that I came to land on this project. My childhood years were dominated by an interest in all things mechanical. I always seemed to have one machine or another scattered in pieces around me. My folks must have given up hope of ever using the garage again once I graduated to dismantling and re-assembling motorbikes.
I embarked on a mechanical engineering diploma but got lured away by the fascination of computers, which kept me preoccupied for more than 20 years. Lady Jane is a project that fills my weekends and odd days off. I still need a paying job to help finance this expensive hobby. It stands to reason that the pace of repairs is dictated by how much money I have on hand.
But these days, I've got a big – and expensive – engineering challenge.
A musty smell down below, in what was once the crew quarters, has turned out to be a damp patch, caused by a leaking drainpipe from the shower room above. After much deliberation, I decided to remove the whole thing. I reasoned that the bunks were damaged beyond any reasonable hope of repair and I had a sense that all was not well behind the wooden façade.
The leaking shower room pipe, though less serious than the near hull breach, proved to be a bigger problem. In the end, the concrete floor had to be dug out and the entire rusted shower room floor had to be replaced, creating a mess in the galley, the engine room and the stern accommodation.
Lady Jane is back in the River Itchen, moored where I first met her. The move to Fareham maxed out my credit cards. To date I've spent about 40,000 pounds (more than $80,000) on repairs, with many more costs on the horizon. The previous owner was overly optimistic when he estimated what it would take to get the boat "up and running."
Talk about blood, sweat and tears. I've given all of those to Lady Jane plus a load of cash as well.
I still have a depressingly-long "to do" list: Fit out the crew quarters; clean-up and paint the engine room; refurbish the galley and wheelhouse; convert the fish hold to cabins; rust bust, paint and fit-out the forward peak; finish rust-busing and painting the hull; install central heating; and add a black and grey water system.
I tell myself it will all get done. One day.
