Dolphins

Two days ago we sailed from Bayona (ES) to Porto (P). We had a totally boring experience, motoring all the way, in the fog or at least with no wind at all or maybe 4-5 knots. Question: Where is the infamous Portuguese North when you need it? Answer: It arrives just as you are about to moor in the marina, with wind against tide!

Anyway, along the way we did have another encounter with dolphins. I think the 7th or 8th time this cruise, but this time it was in calm weather so I dared to use our Insta360x camera on its long selfie stick, in its diving case. Well, the good news is that the camera works very nicely, and the case is watertight. The bad news is that the stick is way too floppy for this use, so we’ll have to make something like a camera pole glued to a real boathook, so that we can move the camera even closer to the dolphins. Still, not bad for a first attempt I think!

Here’s the YouTube video:

I find this captures much more of how beautiful these animals are and why ocean sailors like them so much. Apparently it is still unknown why they like riding just in front of boats so much. We’ve had them accompany us for hours sometimes! Maybe they get some free energy out of the pressure wave preceding the boat, or they just like our speed. I do think that they are more likely to stay around since we switched from red to black antifouling paint. That was done for practical reasons, but also because I heard that whales can react aggressively to red paint. Getting more dolphins for longer is a nice side effect!