WHATS’ UP WITH THE WEATHER?
The Shipping Forecast announcer warned of “a Force 9 westerly gale later for Fair Isle” in a not unsympathetic male voice, as we wearily leaned against the kitchen table near the radio. It had been a long day at sea working our creels and pulling them further off the rocky coast, but now more toil lay ahead.
For we knew intimately the parlance of the BBC2 broadcaster’s words and “later” meant the gale would hit us within a day. This required an early start to venture out into the Pentland Firth in growing seas to recover our fleet of creels; then battling home with a dangerously overloaded, top-heavy boat with low freeboard.
It took a whole winter’s work to build a fleet of creels but only a day to destroy it, should we get the weather wrong. And back in the 1970s the Shipping Forecast was our best source of weather information.
