Dancing Dolphins

March 1, 2010
Hi 70 Lo who cares...
Lat/Lon 25 5.2 N, 80 26.8 W

One of the best, most beautiful things about this area is the bottlenose dolphins. Our very first day at the boat, up in Brunswick, GA, we saw one in the marina. He swam right up to us, clearly checking us out. It was like he was saying, "Hey, there hasn't been anybody at this boat, who are you guys? Well, I'm sure you're fun, so welcome to my home."

We've seen several dolphins since. Both sets of visitors, Sids' kids and Rob and Apryl got to see dolphins during their visit. Despite seeing lots of dolphins, I haven't had much luck getting photos of them. I'm usually too mesmirized to run for my camera. And if I do manage to have my camera, I usually just end up with lots of photos of blue water! But here are a couple of things....

This video was taken with my cheesy little digital camera. It was a visit from about 5 dolphins that swam along beside Quest one day. Again, I got LOTS of pretty blue water, but there is a small amount of dolphin too!

On the way back from the Dry Tortugas, the swells were really large, 7 to 10 feet high. As Quest was going up over a really large one, we saw about 3 little dolphin heads sticking out of the wave. They were surfing the waves and having great fun! As we went over it, we turned to watch them. There were 5 to 7 dolphins, leaping incredibly HIGH out of the back side of the wave, having a wonderful time. Then they'd swim up close beside us again, ride another one, and then LEAP out the backside and come back. They did that a few times.

I did some cropping and tried to play with the lighting, but those two black blobs are dolphins.

Sid and I were both hootin' and cheering, and loving it! We watched a long as we could, until they disappeared from sight behind us. They were having such a great time playing in those big waves! They didn't care that it was windy and snotty. It wasn't such a great day to be sailing, but it was sure a good day to be a dolphin!

I love dolphins.