Turkish Omelette and a Rolling Deck: A Fisherman’s Quiet Philosophy

We don’t just eat fish when we’re out at sea for days on end. People often imagine that life on a trawler is nothing but cold winds, hard work, and plates of whatever we’ve pulled from the water. But life is never as narrow as we assume. I spend a surprising amount of time in the boat’s tiny kitchen, and when the weather allows, I cook a BBQ out on deck.

Out here, meals aren’t guided by clocks or calendars. They’re guided by the sea. When the tide shifts or the fish move, we adjust with them. And so breakfast might be a full spread of meats and warm bread rolls at three in the morning on a Monday, because the sea doesn’t know what day it is, and it certainly doesn’t care.

There’s something strangely liberating about that. When you’re removed from the world’s routine, you begin to see how much of life on land is ruled by habit, by expectation, by invisible pressures that push us through the day without ever asking if we’re truly living. Out here, the ocean shows you how simple life can be when you respond only to what is, the weather, the swell, the moment in front of you.

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In the video, I’m cooking a Turkish omelette. It sounds ordinary enough, but out here nothing is ever entirely ordinary. The boat rocks back and forth, sometimes gently, sometimes not. Every small movement becomes a reminder: to stay present, to hold your balance, to meet each moment without resistance.

And that, I suppose, is the quiet lesson the sea teaches, if one is willing to listen. That life isn’t a straight line of certainty or comfort. It sways, it shifts, it asks you to move with it. Trying to cook while the deck rises and falls beneath your feet becomes a kind of meditation. You can’t force the pan to stay still; you can only adapt, breathe, and continue.

Perhaps that’s why I love cooking out here. Even something as simple as cracking eggs into a bowl becomes an act of awareness. The mind stops racing. There’s only the warmth of the stove, the hiss of oil, the rhythmic motion of the waves, and the knowledge that nothing in this moment needs to be different.

In the quiet between the wind gusts, you realise how rarely, on land, we give ourselves the chance to live so directly, to meet life without fear, without expectation, without the endless noise of thought. Out here, even a Turkish omelette becomes a reminder that the present moment is all we ever truly have. And when you understand that, even breakfast at 3:00 a.m. feels like exactly the right time.

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