AIS tracks the fishing vessel Ajax in Mount's Bay

While the first sight of the AIS tracks might be confusing to the casual observer...

 the highlighted version shows where the three 'tiers' of nets that the Ajax has shot are in the Bay. With only a 36 hour lull in the weather the boat was forced to fish in home waters rather than norh west or west of the Scillies - her normal operational grounds. The boat hauls the nets into the wind so as to keep the boat 'on the gear' - the skipper also has to take note of the direction of the tide flowing as well.

Are #ukstorms worse today? - it would seem not - a review of Penzance's Great Ash Wednesday Storm

Although Penzance's iconic promenade has suffered in the recent storms the damage is nothing in comparison to the damage inflicted during the great Ash Wednesday storm of 1962...

when the back streets - here is Cornwall Terrace in front of the Bath Inn - were badly flooded...

along with the now defunct garage at Tolcarne Motors...

and the Mount's Bay Inn, more often referred to by anyone in Newlyn as the Red Light which hung outside the front door...

like recent storm the Lugger Inn (known as the Marine (or cockroach) Hotel in the 1960s) suffered damage
from seas  crashing over the prom...

which was damaged far more heavily than in this last series of storms...

with complete section of the sea wall destroyed including the railings...

 which were washed back into the sea...

like here in front of the Queens...

the damage wasn't just restricted to the Penzance end, here the entire sea wall protecting the Tolcarne car park was destroyed with the pounding seas forcing huge granite stones against the wall of Peake's the Funeral Directors and Shipwrights...

and blasting a hole in the sea wall on Newlyn Green.

Shooting in the Bay

With the smallest of weather windows and the biggest of ground seas the Ajax has shot a few tiers of nets in the Bay. Leaving the nets 'soak' overnight they plan to steam from Newlyn around 7am to haul the gear before the next weather system hits Cornwall.

Steaming into the weather - the huge distances covered by pelagic boatsfishing off Ireland and landing their fish to Norway

Photo courtesy of Steve Ellwood.

  The 65m Banff registered pelagic boat Resolute...

left Egursund in Norway at 2.30pm on Friday the 7th to begin the long steam...

across the North Sea and through the Pentlandite Firth...

down the west coast of Scotland and Ireland to join the huge fleet of mackerel boats working off Ireland - like all the pelagic boats she will have had to endure some pretty harsh conditions on the way steaming head on into the latest inbound storm to cross the Atlantic.

Weather window of sorts

Bound away from The comfort and quiet of Shelter in Falmouth Docks the Newlyn netter Govenek of Ladram makes her way back out to sea this morning as the shipping forecast gives a decreasing wind...

though storm force 10 decreasing 4 or 5 is hardly going to be a comfortable ride as there will still be 'hills' of ground sea waiting to greet the boat as she heads for the gear...

as the weather station Sevenstones Lightship tells part of the story.

Full steam ahead!

Mass exodus from Killybegs, as all the big pelagic boats that we're sheltering in the port head back out to sea chasing mackerel...

despite there still being a huge weather system stretching almost across the entire North Atlantic Ocean.

Worsening weather off the coast of Cornwall - it's official! #ukstorms

We'll we now know the wind has arrived because even the hardest of the remaining French trawlers off the Cornish Coast has stopped fishing and started dodging under the land in Falmouth Bay.