Doryman

We left the beach before daybreak a sharp breeze out of the northwest, anybody could have know that it was too shitty to fish but we wanted to go. So we went. Kern at the helm and his crewman Jorgen sitting down forward and cursing the pounding. For him it was a day of trouble, getting slammed around for a paltry 1200 krone.
Kern was having fun. We’ve been at this 1000 year he said when the winch was dragging his 13 meter wooden boat down the beach. She didn’t have much power: a 4 cylinder Gardner, 145 HP. They used to use them in the buses in London he tells me. So he uses a system called, appropriately enough, Danish seining. “Shnoor” they call it or something like that my transliteration of Danish being very poor as yet. He sets out an “anka” and the runs out 12 rolas of rope
Then shots the net, attaches another 11 rolas and turns to make a loop back. “now we go home. To ouwa anka!” and because as he says it would take too much power to hold the boat in place, we latch onto the anchor and begin to draw in the net. It takes one hour. And the bag comes up full of flounder. He hoists it in over the side, Jorgen loostens the pucker string on the cod end and fish spill into a hopper. Jorgen ties up the cod end and let’s it over the side again. On the stern Kern rolls the net up onto a spool, shaking fish down the long throat of the net, shaking them out of the meshes. And they lift the bag again and another load spills I ot the hopper fillin both sides.
They begin to sort but the boat rocks madly at anchor and kern says, enough, we go home.
Together they hoist the anchor and pin it to the stern, ready for the next set, tomorrow maybe, but not today. We head in, and Jorgen sorts out the fish while Kern steers us in towards the beach. We pound in over one bar, shuddering as the waves dump us hard on the sand. Having made it over the first barrier we run parallel to beach to where the bulldozer awaits us. Kern turns the boat sharply and drives it ashore. Jorgen tosses a thin line toward the beach. It does not reach past the waves but the bulldozer man grapples it and makes the first connection to land, he draws in a heavy line from the boat and attaches the cable to it. Kern and Jorgen winch the cable aboard and hook it to a heavy wire pennant on the bow. The bulldozer starts to take up the slack, Jorgen lets the hook and eye into the water bit in the pounding surf they come
Apart and the whole operation must be repeated. The second time works and the bulldozer drags us healing this way and that up out of the waves and onto the well furrowed sand at Thorupstrand.

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