A young woman and sea fishing – meets her husband

Stacey Belbin isn’t your usual 24-year-old. Her life has certainly been less ordinary – brought up on a fishing boat and given life skills rare in young women. Here she continues her fascinating story.

Posted by Elderjuice on September 3, 2012. Filed under Lifestyle. Posted with the tags:day trips, Fishing, travel
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A young woman and sea fishing – meets her husband

Stacey Belbin’s beautifully restored Lady Grace, which you can hire for fishing, sight-seeing and birdwatching trips

When I first met my husband I was 18 years old and, since leaving school, had been working for a local building society in Braintree. I had studied hard to become a mortgage advisor and assistant manager to the company.

I never had much of what most would call a teenager’s social life. My values and beliefs were at odds to my peers – I didn’t drink, smoke or go clubbing. So I lacked friends of my own age and my first two post-school years were spent on my career and the boats.

Change
I lived to work. But then I met Scott and this soon changed – I saw life was for living not working.

Obviously work helps but I realised it’s unhealthy to work day and night.

Scott had been brought up in the sea angling environment and needless to say our first date was out on his Dad’s boat. Scott taught me the art of angling, the thrill of the catch and playing it as you reel in.

Rod fishing instantly appealed to me more than net fishing, not least because there are no nets to clean out afterwards.

So after we had been courting for about a year we decided to invest in an angling boat which we would run at weekends. We still continued our day jobs, Scott as a carpenter and I as a mortgage advisor.

Booming
Our fishing business was booming. We were in demand, word was spreading about our commitment and enthusiasm to fishing and our trips were becoming popular. But this meant less and less time for me to fish.

Teaching beginners is fun – helping people all day baiting up and casting out. However, as they became more experienced my job became more tedious.

Watching others catch fish without being able to join in myself called for a change. So we decided it was time I had my own toy to play with.

House
By this time Scott and I had got married and bought our first house together.

We searched the market for the perfect boat. I wanted to run an open launch and take people on trips round the harbour. I take it for granted but everyone who sees Mersea from this different perspective is amazed.

I also thought there was a market for a water-taxi service. Mersea gets a lot of visiting yachtsmen. They love to sample the delights of local seafood restaurants but don’t want to handle a little rubber dingy home – especially after a few drinks or in rough weather.

Plan
So my plan was to run boat trips in the summer and holidays and offer beginners’ fishing trips on winter weekends when the cod, skate and whiting come into the River Blackwater.

I gave up my career in the bank to work for a local island company. I manage credit control for a stationary company, not the high life of a bank manager but it fits around my love of working on the boat.

I get every weekend and I negotiated extra time off – the half terms in May/June and October and the whole 6 weeks school summer holidays – to allow me to run my boat trips at peak times.

We don’t have children yet so my manager is extremely generous to give me this time off.

I just needed a boat fit for the job. So, after much trawling the internet and visiting different ports in search of hidden treasures, we finally found the boat I was longing for.

I named her Lady Grace.