The wicked smile on Lady Hamilton’s skipper, Dylan Bean’s, face said it all when he looked across as we slipped the mooring in the Helford estuary – this was going to be a rough trip. The weather had been bad for days, and it was now blowing hard from the south east, which always made for nasty pitchy, choppy, seas off the Helford.

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The exceptionally bad weather further out in the Atlantic soon revealed an unexpected bonus – we were accompanied by flocks of storm petrels, some time as many as 30. They were smaller than I expected, they seemed smaller than house martins, and they duly did their stuff, pattering on and under the water, appearing to be interested, in a casual non-committal sort of way, in the bits of guts and the rest being thrown overboard.

The rough weather, which had got worse sooner than expected, and lasted longer than forecast, revealed one down side to set nets. Lady Hamilton hadn’t been able to get back to nets that should have been hauled a couple of days ago. It meant that the crew were really pushed to extract what was now a large number of crabs, badly tangled, out of the nets in the time available. And of course if they left the nets, it would only get worse. The least worse option was to smash some of the smaller crabs out of the nets. “Could have been worse” was the skippers verdict,  but nobody feel good about it.

What was totally unexpected was that some of the petrels followed us right onto the moorings well up the estuary.  And while Lorna was cleaning down the decks, one actually landed on the boat, and then flew onto her hand after a scrap – totally fearless. Needless to say, by that time I had put away the camera gear – a cardinal rule broken, and punished

Initial Opinion >