22> Waiting For The Water to Boil

My blogs have been as scarce as lobsters recently.
One set of pots disappeared in circumstances I am not happy with: they were tangled up with another fisherman’s gear, and try as I might, I could not lift them. The next time I went out, his pots had been moved and mine had gone.
Probably, he cut them off and discarded them, but this is not on: the fishing lore is to retie anyone elses’ ropes if you have to cut them.

The net has been good , but finding a lull long enough to be sure of setting it and getting it back has been hard. Windguru has been invaluable, and remarkably accurate.
Weed has been a curse, as the offshore winds have kept it lingering in the best bays.

I took advantage of a 15% Christmas discount and bought a Malibu MiniX as a netter, but am having too much fun with it elsewhere to take it down to the beach and servitude yet.

Have been reading Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O’Sullivan, about his childhood on the Blaskets, off Dingle, and am taken back at Monk’s Cave, where I used to have a summer hut made of driftwood and would set pots in the rocks...




When June came, it was very fine. It would gladden your heart to look out to sea, the sea-raven standing on the rocks with his wings outspread, the ring-plover and the sea-pie foraging among the stones, the sea-gulls picking the limpets, the limpet itself relaxing its grip and the periwinkle the same, the crab and the rock-pool trout coming out of their holes in the stillness of the sea to take a draught of the sweet-smelling air. So that it was no wonder for the sinner to feel a happiness of heart as he travelled the road.
When we had our pots ready we turned our faces west to Inish-na-Bro. It was a wild backward place, great dizzy cliffs above my head in which hundreds and thousands of birds were nesting, the guillemot, whippeen, common puffin, red puffin, black-backed gull, petrel, sea-raven, breeding together in the wild cliffs; seals in couples here and there sunning themselves on the rocks, each bird with its own cry and the seals with their moan, a dead calm on the sea but for the little ripples moving in and making a glug-glag up through the crevices of the rocks.
I was sitting in the middle of the curragh, taking heed of all around me, as happy as any mother’s boy. Now and then I saw a puffin coming in from the sea with a bundle of sprats across its bill, and I began to reflect on the life of birds, what great wisdom they have to provide for their young. What was the difference between the nature of man, the nature of the birds, and of the seals? We were fishing lobster to nourish ourselves, the puffin providing for its chick, and the seal stretched out on the rock above after its labours. How strange is the way of the world!
When we had the pots laid in the sea, we went ashore on the island.It was a delight to be in it, the stones ready to burst with the heat, clumps of thrift on every inch of the ground, and bright flowers blooming. I sat down, the sea-birds settled around me, many more flying through the air with a great clamour as they came in from the sea, a haze floating across every hill and hanging at the foot of every cliff, a path of gold stretching out before me as far as Bray Head and every ripple glistening in the sunshine.




I caught a fine cock lobster today, so will be able see the new year in with a fine gift from the old.

21> Blast & Blather

I haven’t taken in the nature of this coast yet.

We’ve had a wolf-pack of low pressure systems, vying in the savagery of their winds, for a fortnight now.

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The trees have thrashed as express-trains of wind that have gusted through our yard. I have lain in bed, imagining huge seas crashing on my home beach, clawing at the kayaks, tied to a thorn-tree.
The forecast is for yet stronger winds as the new moon approaches, bringing bigger tides. I have no idea where my pots are in all this real and imagined mayhem.

I went down to check things yesterday through a blinding drizzle. The sea in the cove was muddy, but innocently calm. The South-westerly wind howling at home is offshore on this coast. The Preseli Hills also help mute it.
The only winds that hit hard here are the Northerly and its brothers. They power in, and build a serious swell. I must learn this.

The beach I fished from in Llanrhystud, Ceredigion was a classic lee-shore, reacting to all winds except Easterlies.
The biggest seas there came with a south-westerly. As the wind veered round to the West, then North-West, the ground-sea would diminish, turning into white-horses and foam.




North-westerlies are nine-to-fivers. If you need to nip out and they are forecast, you can sometimes sneak out early, before they get up. A July party-trick of theirs is to blow up to a crescendo on an incoming tide on a Summer afternoon, only to die to a calm innocence with the dusk, leaving a horde of exhausted holiday boatsmen who went out over the tide.

Easterlies look nothing from the shore, but a mile out make a short, sharp sea that turns work into a tangled struggle. This wind is the one that quietly wafts kids on inflatables into an RNLI logbook. Common in August, 'the month of interference'.
A South-Easterly could bring a ground-sea. Often it was prelude to a blow.

Southerlies get up slowly, with a steady roar, like a grand orchestral piece.

Northerlies are wilder and get up quickly, then prone to throw quick punches of wind. They used to favour March.

Little mantras of experience. Sea-skipping songs.

Some of this is true on this coast. Some never was. Some of this is changing everywhere.

The character of the different winds seems to be intensifying. As if there is a magnification of their extremes.
We are definitely getting more Northerlies, worse luck.


Amongst all this climatic uncertainty, this present run of Lows feels quite nostalgic. That old Gulf Stream music. A spell of late Autumn weather. Two months late.

Better for this kind of blather than paddling.

20> A Brief History of Sea Dreams

Am I alone in seeing four hooded figures carrying a boat? I remember a photo of a curragh being carried on mens' heads down the strand, like a large, black beetle.
This might not only be the imaginings of a sea-crazed man.

This cromlech, Pentre Ifan, was I’m sure I heard, raised by a group of sea-faring folk, unrelated to neighbouring tribes. It’s about three miles from Newport Bay, a safe distance away to bury your dead, but overlooking it. It is beautiful. [Shame about the fence.]

This area is humming with megalithic sites and sacred places. The outcrop that the Stonehenge bluestones were chosen from is nearby.
Yucatan, in Mexico, and Carnac, in Brittany are similar clusters of ancient sites set on special coastlines.
I find it easy and exciting to imagine adventurous, sea-faring cultures sharing connections far beyond our present grasp.

Next I conjure the Bristol Boys. In fact, boats from all over Wessex quietly fished the cod-banks off Newfoundland and ventured elsewhere. A time when the sea might lead to New Worlds and Opportunity.
When this spirit collided with a Spanish Bullion Ship it changed from pirate to privateer to conscription in the British Navy and Empire all too fast.
Like from childhood, through adolescence, to mortgage repayments.
Britannia ruled the waves, which became a domestic route to the Empire.





Jack Sparrow is our appointed adventurer evading this new, orderly Realm.


We choose our own corner. For instance, gunning out in a chartered boat in a gang of hopeful, gung-ho fishermen doesn't appeal to me. I crewed as deckie on an old sidewinder to Iceland once and once only.
I drifted to the seashore from a crowded land. I loved bouncing off its isolation.

I learned to respect both the sea’s governance, and its perversity:
The tide came in alright, but heaped up by an unforecast gale. The waves rolled steadily onshore, but with tantalising frothing wallows of quiet water, to paddle frantically through.

Not wanting to sign up to the “dog-brain”, regulation-strewn Order of things we have been served with since Adventure became a media format, doesn’t necessarily mean exclusion from the pack or isolation.

I discovered an entire colony of sea-dreamers the other day in waters I thought I had charted before on the web. Our differences were outweighed by what we share.
The same seas and history.
They also have a lot of invaluable technical knowledge and experience of sit-on kayaks.

I must learn their customs.
I think they call themselves ‘Angluss’.








He takes and he learns to give
He aches and he learns to live
He stakes all his silver,
On a promise to be free
Mermaids live in colonies,
All these sea-dreams come to me.

(the dawntreader, joni mitchell)