A Day With The Dolphins!

Today was a mixed bag of emotions. Had a BAD day at the dentist and needed to get my mind off of it, so I decided a sail was the perfect way to ease my mind. I left my camera on the boat accidentally on New Years Day so I had it on board. The wind was just alright…enough to move the boat at 2-3 knots but not much more than that. It was turning out to be quite dull. The water had 2-3 foot swells occasionally so it wasn’t perfectly calm, but there was no chop so it was ok. The sun was out and it was about 75-80. I was in a t-shirt and my life offshore life vest. As I am sailing I here the unmistakable sound of a whale surfacing and blowing his spout. Once you hear it, you can here it for miles on a quiet day. I kept looking on the horizon for the whale and from the distance and sound, it was big one! I spotted it on the horizon probably a mile or so from the boat. BIG…the part that surfaced was about the size of Cuajota, which is 30 feet. When I went out with KJ for the first ocean sail, we saw one surface right on the stern of the boat almost…and seeing the size of the whale underwater it was easily 40 feet long…just an amazing sight. Anyway back to today. As I am looking for the whale I spot lots of objects jumping out of the water…yup, DOLPHINS!!! They were headed directly for me and there were hundreds of them.

For about 30 minutes I sat and watched them, I followed a little bit, but realized they were coming in waves. Must have been about 5 sets of them. Maybe 30 or so per group. I pulled out the SLR and started snapping away. It was calm enough and I was the only one in the area so I could take pics. They came right up to the boat swam under it and around it, jumped out feet from the boat almost as if they were saying hello…its something to look eye to eye with a Dolphin and see what appears to be a warm smile greeting you. I think they actually know we are not much different than them, except they can swim soooo much better than us…lol.

I decided I had enough shots of these guys and wanted to let them get back to their fun after all I am just a guest in their world. On the way back to the harbor I saw another group coming…they swam by and at the last mint, one changed direction and swam close enough to the boat to literally touch it! I was sitting there and we were looking each other in the eye for a good 30 seconds. His group was swimming the other way, year he swam next to the boat, and slowed down to my speed and escorted me almost to the harbor entrance before he turned and jetted back to his group. Breathtaking!

I decided to get a pic of the famous Sea Lions on the Newport Beach buoy as well. Love these guys!