On October 23rd, the day after the Velux 5 Oceans race began and all our duties had been completed, the two Clipper boats began the four day sail back up to Gosport, England. We headed a bit west of north to pass around the upper corner of France before we could head into the English Channel.
Occasionally we would see dolphins in the day. Something I'd never considered before, however, was hearing them. The first two days were rough sailing with high winds, heaving seas, and a crashing boat pounding loudly as we'd repeatedly crest a wave and then drop down into the trough with a thud. On the second night, however, things had calmed down enough that the most noticeable noise was simply the light wind and a bit of whispering water passing the hull. That night, as I stood at the helm while the skipper sat nearby, I saw him turn quickly to glance out onto the water beside us.
"What?" I asked.
"I thought heard dolphins," he said.
"You thought you heard them?"
"Yeah...you can hear them take their breaths when it's this quiet."
We heard or saw nothing more that night but the next night after our watch had stumbled up onto the deck at 2:00 a.m. in our sleep-deprived state for our four hour shift, the first mate ran through a quick briefing before heading down to her bunk:
"Winds still out of the southwest, maintain a heading of 340, and the dolphins have been putting on quite a show for a couple of hours."
We all looked over either the side of the boat and collectively dropped our jaws at what we saw.
I've witnessed glowing bacteria in oceans in California, Costa Rica, and even the Bahia Fosforescente in Puerto Rico. What I saw below me, however, was nothing like any display of bio-luminescence I could have imagined.
Around 15 dolphins sped along both sides of our boat like a group of school kids playfully harassing a grandmother pushing a shopping cart. Though our speed of 8 kts. wasn't particularly slow, it was still amazing to see how easily the dolphins clearly could move at any rate they chose in relation to us. Moreover, their path just a few feet underwater glowed and remained glowing for 50 meters or so. At a distance they looked like glowing torpedo tracks but as they drew near, you could clearly see the entire dolphin under the water by the outline of the glow all around him.
Even more delightful was to hear them breath. It sounded so human, so much like we might sound if we could swim like that.
The best way I can describe it is that it sounded just the way the Scandinavians (particularly the Danes) say, "Yes." It's a "Ja" coming not from the larynx but only vocalized by a quick inhalation that follows a sudden curling back of the tongue to open up the throat after a vacuum has been created with the diaphragm.
Yeah, I know that's quite a complex description but if you've ever been around a Dane or two, you'll know exactly what I mean.
Someone from our watch had already taken over the helm so, free of any immediate duty, I clipped my safety line to the jackstay (a length of secure webbing running the length of the boat) and worked my way up to the bow. At the very tip, I laid my chest onto the deck and moved as far forward as I could until my head projected through the pulpit next to the anchor at the front of the boat and my face was just a few feet above the five or six dolphins playing in the bow wake.
I've only just begun to experience the majesty of the open ocean but it's hard to imagine anything can top this experience. Below me in the rustling waters, these huge glowing shapes surfed left and right with these happy pulses of energy, their breaths sounding more like a gathering of sycophant Scandinavians than anything else.
After twenty minutes of this delight, I returning to the cockpit to watch the dance of the other dolphins on the sides of the boat. They mostly traveled in pairs or threes and sometimes you'd see five streaking by in perfect formation. Once in a while you'd see one some distance from the boat hurtling to intercept our path at twice the speed that the others were doing as they moved around and under out boat. As often as not, one dolphin would come to a complete stop as it would suddenly wheel into a six foot circle, as if he'd found something to eat.
We also saw what we thought were mothers and children; a pair of dolphins in formation with one of them being only half the size of the other.
Obviously I couldn't take a photograph but I've created two simulations of what it looked like. Understandably, it doesn't come close to capturing the true majesty of the moment.
Click on either picture for a full screen version to get a better idea of the performance we had for all the four hours of our watch, from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
The sea was never as bio-luminescent again during our four day journey north. Nor did we ever see any more dolphins. A friend on another boat sailing roughly the same journey as our two clipper boats has e-mailed to ask if I saw the night dolphin show that they saw. Apparently it was the night to play all over that part of the Atlantic.
