Thursday evening in Newlyn and it's still blowing hard as storm clouds powered by gale and severe gale force (Force 8 & 9) winds soar over the roof of the fish market now sporting seasonal lighting...
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| The graph at the foot of the chart provided by VesselTracker AIS also give the speed over the ground made good by a vessel. |
after hauling both beam trawls aboard in a Force 9 gale and steaming for nine hours...
the crew of the William Sampson Stevenson are back in the harbour on deck landing at the fish market by 6pm ably assisted by the Wiffer and young Roger...
a distance of just under 40 miles at reduced speed
Rockets keeps the pressure on the landing gear...
as skipper James uses the whipping drum of the man winch to lift the boxes of fish from below...
in the berth ahead, the netter Ajax whose crew spent the last 26 hours on deck without a break hauling a full set of gear in atrocious weather...
Imagine riding through this for 14 hours on your way home from work.
which did not moderate as expected while steaming for over 12 hours on the way in, at one time rolling so heavily the engine room alarms were set off...
now it is just a question of getting the fish off the boat...
and into the market for sorting and grading for the morning market...
the beam trawler Cornishman landed several tons of cuttles...
fish from the WSS waits to be put through the grading machine...
wind the clock on to an hour before day break on Friday morning and the bog fella is preparing the crabber, Three Jays for a day at sea in heavy seas working her pots...
inside the market the boxes are stacked up to seven high...
to accommodate the massive 226 box trip of hake from the Ajax...
which left just enough room for the more petite market staff to squeeze through...
though the prices, obviously affected by the extreme nationwide weather, when relayed to skipper Alan on the Ajax came as something of a shock it seems...
with plenty of dogfish on the grounds it is not difficult for boats to meet their 180 stone quota for the month, though this leaves considerable amounts being returned to the sea dead on a daily basis by many boats......
big flats like these turbot...
and brill...
made good money this morning in a strong market leading up to the Christmas break...
plenty of ray from the WSS...
and a handful of bass with all the boats landing...
especially the handliners from St Ives...
and this huge 5.2 kilo specimen caught by the Cornishman...
along with the more usual beam trawl fish of monk tails...
plaice...
and morkis (sea dog) or murgies as they are more often pronounced locally...
the Sapphire III scraped up a few unseasonal JDs...
while the James RH managed a good shot of lemons...
Dovers...
and megrims...
the netter Silver Dawn piled in on the pollack...
keeping the market busy...
a perfect day for showing off the range of fish up for auction off to visitors...
meanwhile, Ian moves the buyers past the dogs...
and the fish begin their journeys to the merchants for processing and despatch...
the new RNLI building is taking shape very quickly...
overlooking the pontoon berth for the ever-ready boats.