Happy New Year to Everyone and Calm Waves to all the Sailors at Sea.
My mother used to say that when we sat by the radio on New Year's Eve and listened to the ship to shore broadcast from Radio Norddeich. Families of the seamen on fishing boats on the North Sea and the Baltic had a few minutes to talk to their fathers and brothers. I would cry my eyes out listening to the children asking the father when he would come home, such shy and reluctant conversations. I had a vivid imagination and always worried about the Christmas storms that took fishing boats every year.
My mother created the New Year's wish to arm me with something to appease my wild imagination.
Very early in my life, I started listening to the shipping forecast.