Storms and Life — Times Are Tough, So I Have to Be Tough With Them..

The sea has its own authority.

You don’t need forecasts or screens to know when it’s decided against you. You can hear it in the wind before you open the door. You can feel it in the way the house seems to brace itself, as if it already knows what’s coming. Long before you see the water, you understand that today is not a working day.

Out of Eyemouth just now, the sea is dangerous.
Huge swells rolling through.
Four metre waves lifting and dropping with real weight behind them.

This isn’t the kind of rough you work around.
It’s the kind you respect.

The sea doesn’t announce danger loudly, it shows it. In the way the horizon heaves. In the way the wind tears at the tops of waves instead of brushing them. In the way even experienced hands know better than to test it.

When the sea says no like this, you listen.
You always listen.

That isn’t fear.
It’s understanding.

There was a time when staying ashore felt like failure to me. If I wasn’t out working, I felt like I was wasting daylight. Fishing teaches you to measure life in tides, catches, and hours worked, and it can be hard to accept days where none of that moves forward.

But the sea has a way of correcting you.

Nearly two years ago now, I broke my ankle falling off the wheelhouse. One moment you’re stepping where you’ve stepped a thousand times before, the next you’re on the deck knowing something’s gone wrong. Bones heal, but not always cleanly. The ankle still lets me know it’s there, especially in cold weather, or when the ground shifts underfoot. 

At first, I fought that reminder. I pushed through, worked around it, pretended it wasn’t there. Fishermen are good at that. But pain, like the sea, has patience. It waits until you stop arguing.

Now, when the weather closes in and the sea is running heavy, I stay ashore. And when I can, I walk.

I walk the coastline near Balmedie, slow and steady. The ground there doesn’t let you forget where you are, sand giving way to stone, paths that rise and fall without warning. You have to watch your step. You have to stay present. In a strange way, it suits me.

Tyson comes with me, solid as ever. A Rottweiler doesn’t rush for the sake of it. He moves with purpose, nose low, completely absorbed in the world as it is. He doesn’t care about wave heights or swell direction. He just knows we’re outside, together, and that’s enough.

From land, the sea looks different.

You see the scale of it more clearly. The way those swells stack up and march in, one after another, carrying energy that doesn’t belong to you. Even from the shore, you can feel it, the power, the unpredictability, the reminder that this isn’t something to dominate or tame.

And yet, even in its danger, there’s order.

The waves rise and fall. The wind does what it does. Nothing is wasted. The sea isn’t chaotic, it’s precise. It moves exactly as it needs to.

Standing there, you realise how often we confuse movement with progress. How often we push on simply because stopping feels uncomfortable. But the sea teaches a harder, quieter lesson: knowing when not to move can save your life.

For years, I thought strength meant pushing through, going out regardless, ignoring pain, proving something to myself. But strength at sea isn’t about proving anything. It’s about judgement. About knowing your limits and respecting the ones you don’t control.

Life works the same way.

There are days for effort and days for endurance. Days where the right decision is to go, and days where the right decision is to stay put and wait. You don’t lose your purpose by standing still. You don’t fall behind because you choose safety over stubbornness.

When the sea is running heavy and the house feels quiet, thoughts slow down. Silence makes room for them. You notice things you normally miss, the sound of wind moving through the walls, the way light changes across the room, the steady passing of time without anything demanding your attention.

On days like this, I remind myself that the sea doesn’t disappear because I’m not on it. It’s still there, doing what it has always done. And I’m still who I am, even when I’m not working.

The tide will turn. The swell will ease. The sea will open again, not because I want it to, not because I’m ready, but because that’s its nature.

And when it does, I’ll go back out with the same respect I’ve learned to carry ashore.

Until then, I walk.
I breathe.
I listen.

Because sometimes the most important part of the journey is knowing when to wait.

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