Yesterday as per my email, my partner and I jumped on the boat over to the mainland to get a few things that we can’t get locally. 

We’d left it a little late so the weather was getting a little heavy by the time we caught the ferry. On the way back it was worse. 

The boat was rocking and rolling, sea spray was making it over the gunwales and onto our car at times. It was the roughest journey we’ve had on the ferry since we came here. 

But really it wasn’t exactly life threatening and it’s only a 20 minute journey. It did remind me though of a time when myself and a friend were in a much smaller boat in much rougher seas and thought we might actually not make it.. 

This was when I worked on a Salmon Farm - way further North than I am now. Up there the weather changes fast and that’s what happened to us. 

We found ourselves struggling to keep a little plastic boat steered into waves that were higher than it’s cabin. When we dipped in between waves we couldn’t see anything but a wall of water in front of us. 

We were pretty sure we were going to overturn and life jackets or no we wouldn’t have survived. This was December - the water was freezing and as I say, the waves were over 6ft high.

But we were able to wrestle the boat somehow into the lee side of the fish cages we were working on. We spent a couple of cold hours on those metal walkways until the storm passed. 

When storms do that in the Hebrides its quite weird. One minute you are in hell the next it’s like it never happened. The sun comes out, a rainbow forms and that chocolate box image of the Highlands returns! 

Two things about this: One - You just never know when your time may be up. If it had been my time I would have been 24 and would have died whilst feeding fish …. definitely not the best use of my life

Two - Sometimes you really need a storm to clear things out for you - to give you perspective and highlight what really is important to you. 

I had a few near misses on that Fish farm but I left soon after the one I described to pursue bigger dreams. 

I guess the point I’m making is that none of know how many chances we get to really go for gold in life. It’s very much easier these days to achieve our dreams and really it’s almost our duty to do it. 

So when we find cast iron opportunities like SFM that can get us there - we should jump on them…

Cheers

Dave