Shipping Forecasts, God Guidance
A few years ago we were fishing north of the oil rigs about ninety miles east-northeast from Peterhead for prawns and fish. It was October and fishing was good, with a large fleet of boats at work. Up to Wednesday night it had been a lovely week of weather, but that night the forecast was for storm-force winds on Thursday night. With the sea so calm and the fishing good, we, along with a lot of other boats decided to carry on fishing. Some of the fishing boats that never normally came out that distance went away in. We fished until six o’clock on Thursday evening when we heard the shipping forecast—severe gale 9 to violent storm 11: a very, very bad forecast. We arrived into Fraserburgh on Friday morning after a good pounding. The wind was so strong that the boxes on the pier were going everywhere. There were some record wind speeds recorded in different parts. We heard in the harbor that one of the boats we were fishing along with, and were only a couple of miles from us, when we ...