All Play and No Work!

Someone stole the sun! However it still reached the mid 70’s.

This morning we headed South then East to Bear Marina to join a dolphin watching cruise. This cruise was organised by the campground, and apart from this giving us 10% off the price for the cruise and lunch it had other advantages. As enough of us had signed up, we got a boat to ourselves, that in itself is not important. What is important is that a second boat was running for Joe Q Public! Why is this important you (should) ask? Read on.

We boarded the boat which is advertised as a 50ft Navy boat. It was new and clean which is always a good sign. There is a control position on the main deck, then a flying bridge about 20ft above the deck. Once we were all aboard we headed out to the bay and the skipper transferred up to the flying bridge. After a few minutes he appeared to be having an issue with the engine speed; apparently one of the passengers had hung her purse from the throttle lever on the main deck!!!

Once that issue had been resolved we increased speed and within a few minutes we were joined by a dolphin swimming behind us and jumping in the wake, however after a couple of minute he gave up playing. We continued searching for more dolphin activity, but there was very little, just a couple of fins in the water. We did manage to glimpse a manta ray just under the surface though. By this time I was wondering if we would see any more dolphin activity.

The second boat had joined up with us by this time. he boats ran parallel with each other about 50ft apart building up speed. As the speed increased so did the wake thrown up by the boats, where the wakes collided there was a mound of water about 6-8ft high. This turbulent water was soon to become the dolphins playground! Three dolphins emerged from the wake, and started jumping and skimming the water for a number of minutes. As we were seated in the stern on the same side that the other boat was on we got a great view. Taking pictures on the other hand was a little more difficult, my digital camera has a noticeable delay between hitting the button and the picture being taken, however I did get a few shots where the dolphins were actually in the frame and not back under water.

After this the boats split up again to go in search of more dolphins, again we saw a couple but they stayed below the surface. The boats joined up again and built up speed and very soon we were joined by 6 or 7 dolphins skimming and jumping, great fun to watch!!

After the cruise we had lunch at the marina where it was warm enough to sit outside and look across the channel… life is so tough sometimes!