Timmay on the lobster boat - Brandon Bay
You may well know of Tim Wyers (Timmay!!!), a windurfer from Sydney, who disappeared off on his OE earlier this year. This tale finds him riding the high-seas off the coast of Ireland, with wind aplenty...
And here are a few pics of the sunny Irish Coast.
Lobster-fishing according to Tim...
As most of you guys know, I took a job on as a fisherman, fishing for
lobsters. It all started when I arrived in Brandon Bay in the south-west of
Ireland and one of the local windsurfers - Rob - helped me with everything. He had me set up with a car, a place to stay and the job within the first week.
‘Do you want a job on the fishing boats?’ Rob asked. ‘You'll probably
start at the end of the week.’ (Around the start of August)
‘Yeah I'll give it a go,’ I replied.
Towards the end of the week Rob told me I'm starting the next day at 4 am.
‘Yeah sweet.’
He then started laughing to himself. ‘I forgot to tell you, these guys are the hardest fishermen on the pier. You will never work so hard with anyone else in your life.’
So off I went; 600 pots a day, working with a skipper that resembled Saddam Hussein, due to a similar moustache. Hard work but the money was good.
Fishing, Tuesday Sep 13th
My day started leaving my house early morning driving past the beach and it was already 15 knots from the south-west. I was thinking to myself ‘No work today and windsurfing all day, what a job’. Got to the skipper’s house and headed down to the pier. Both the skippers hopped out to check the pier, with the forecast of ‘wind building’.
I said to Paul ‘We'll be back in bed soon.’
WRONG.
Declan jumped back into the car and reversed it to offload the bait. I tilted my head back and thought ‘This is going to be one hell of a day.’ As we were rowing out to the boat I would see other fisherman pull up to the pier and turn straight round. ‘Lucky bastards.’ I thought.
As we went out things were a little rough but no more than any other time. We did about 3 strings (170 pots), then the wind picked up to about 30 knots. I was like ‘This sucks’, but we proceeded, finding it hard to keep our balance and I was thinking of the windsurfing I was missing. The wind then started to show what it could really do in Ireland as it climbed up to 45 - 50 knots with a decent swell - a whole new ball game. I had a few 50-knot gusts hit me, that literally pushed me over and at one stage I got slammed and found myself lying in the bait tub. The undersize crabs thrown over the edge would just fly back into the boat. Every now and then a big spray would come over the side of the boat and straight down Tommy’s (my skipper) back. I would then just laugh out loud – ‘Its your own fault!" No comment was forthcoming. At one stage we were going over the waves so hard that the GPS turned itself off for a couple of seconds. I asked Tommy ‘How strong are these boats?’
‘Well the dealer said it wouldn’t break, no matter what situation you put it through.’ he replied
‘Ha, OK…’
‘Well, he hasn’t been wrong so far.’ he replied with a with a grin on his face.
Getting towards to our next string, I looked over to the rocks and saw something I'd never seen in my life before. As the waves hit the cliffs all the whitewater would get lifted and carried in the air as if it was just spray. I couldn't believe what was happening - I would never have thought it possible.
We went to another set of strings down wind. I looked over my shoulder out of the cabin and said ‘Tommy, take a look at this.’ As we looked over our shoulders we saw what looked like a squall of rain, but it was the ocean getting lifted by the wind and coming towards us. Tommy got his phone out to take a picture. The gust hit us and there were solid, heavy tubs of crab claws getting tipped over in the boat and empty tubs getting launched out of the boat. At this point I went from fun adrenaline to fearing for my life. The wind gauge was saying 58 knots. Tommy was saying ‘OK one more string in a protected area and we're out of here.’
‘I won't protest!’ I replied.
So we finished up for the day and went back to moor our boat, only to find the canoe had sunk.
Tommy was like ‘I don't know why that was.’
‘Yeah…’ I wondered.
For all you windsurfers, no one this day could hang onto a 3.3 m.
Anyway, see you guys later
Timo
P.S. R.I.P Woofy.
Click here for pics.
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