Dolphin Magic

Most boaters live in cities, and cities aren’t great places to experience nature.  Too many cars, roads, buildings and lights, not to mention all the people going places.  One exception in my city is bears.  They drop by now and then in the fall to see if we forgot to fasten the lids on our ‘bear proof’ garbage cans.  Bears cause some excitement in the neighbourhood when they visit, but for the most part, we don’t see much ‘nature’.

So when boaters in BC do their yearly migration to the Gulf Islands or Desolation Sound, you might say their radars are up when it comes to nature.  They’re away from the city, moving on the water in all kinds of boats, anchoring in small bays, and exploring tiny islands.  Boaters are always looking for nature stuff. They paddle along shorelines in kayaks, looking into kelp beds, watch an eagle in a tree across the bay with binoculars, delight in a family of otters as they play beside a wharf.   Boaters are curious people.  Beside taking great satisfaction in watching each other (especially when anchoring), they hope to see mother nature strut her stuff once or twice when they escape the city.

Pam and I are no different.  I confess, we love to watch people anchoring, but we love watching nature more.  When our sailboat Tesseract takes us away, we’re always treated to displays of nature and can recall events years later when most other things are forgotten.  Nature has away of doing that to you.  She’s pretty impressive when she puts on a show.  Boaters never forget a breeching whale, or an eagle grabbing a salmon.  City people who don’t have boats pay huge amounts of money to see what boaters see every season.  We’re fortunate.  A few summers ago, Pam and I were very fortunate.

On Thursday before the August long weekend, we left the dock at Powell River before 10:00 and headed across the straight for Comox.  We wanted to get there Thursday afternoon so we could catch the Filberg Festival and ‘Blues Friday’. Canadian musicians from across the land perform in an outdoor park near the harbour for the entire weekend, and it’s magic. Listen to music all day, go out for dinner, and sleep on your boat. I guess we were taking a break from nature.

As we motored towards Texada Island, there wasn’t a trace of wind, and it was hot and smoggy, the way it gets when wind is scarce in Georgia Straight for days.  The night before, I remember taking a picture as the sun set behind Vancouver Island and the sun looked surreal, like a huge orange spotlight, with so much smog in the air.  Occasional boats made their way into the harbour in the relative cool of the evening. Everything was quiet at the end of the day.

Other than the rhythmic tapping of the old Yanmar, things on Tesseract were pretty quiet too.   Pam was down below putting on sunscreen and I stood at the helm with a coffee, resigned to another day of motoring, which for most sailors, is a let down.  And it was going to be scorcher, not a cloud in sight.  Our course would take us past the north end of Texada Island before we turned southwest towards Comox.  When it’s like this, power boaters are in heaven - sailors take to fixing things or catching up on a novel.  In the absence of wind and waves, sailboats feel purposeless, like a drill with no holes to make. 

Nevertheless, Tesseract and her crew were headed for Comox, wind or no wind.  I had been driving for a little over an hour when a flurry of wave activity caught my attention dead ahead, about a kilometre north of the tip of Texada.  It was far enough ahead that I couldn’t tell what I was looking at.  At first I thought of water breaking on a reef.  I checked the chart - no reef within five kilometres of our position, and besides, you need waves to have breaking water on a reef.  Not a wrinkle today.  I stood puzzled for a moment, then became aware of something amazing.

Mother nature showed up in an extravagant way.  From this distance, I could just make out dark fins knifing through the water.  At least sixty dolphins moved north together towards Hernando Island like a herd of runaway horses on a prairie grassland.  The surfacing motion was frantic, fast, and powerful.  These animals were busy doing something, together, with what looked to me like a sense of urgency.   I’d never seen this before.  When I snapped out of initial shock, I called Pam.

“Dolphins!  Dozens of them!  Holy crap!”  I shouted, trying to make myself heard over the engine.  Pam sprang to the companionway.

“What?  Dolphins?”  She didn’t say another word, but after spotting the animals, still half a kilometre away, she dove back in to the cabin for the binoculars.

When Pam was in high school she wanted to be a marine biologist.  She was excited, and I knew this was a big deal for us.   The dolphins were headed north at first and I thought we hadn’t a chance of catching them, to be near them.  Nevertheless, I nudged up the throttle and pointed Tesseract towards the fleeting Dolphins. I knew they were moving far faster than Tesseract and the chase seemed futile.  But after a couple of minutes, the pod began to circle and head in our direction. The pod changed directions several times, getting slightly closer, all the while, Pam watching them through the binoculars.

“Wow!  Amazing! Look at that!” she cried as they surfaced, dove, jumped and breached. 

“They must be feeding, circling around herring or something,” I offered, trying to be objective when every part of my being was giving way to pure wonder. 

 I soon became speechless because the dolphins had turned again and were headed straight for us.  I aimed the bow on a converging course and they didn’t change direction.  Pam was watching them approach through the binocularsand when the animals were less than 100 metres away, she lowered the binos and jumped because of how close they were.  That was funny.

I eased off on the throttle and let Tesseract glide towards these beautiful animals.  The sound of their activity was like sitting beside river rapids, but as they eventually surrounded us and began to dive under Tesseract and the trailing zodiac, things became more quiet, almost transcendent.  It was like we were surrounded by very intelligent beings from another planet. Sort of a “close encounter.”  Pam and I had seen lots of smaller porpoises in pairs at some distance, but we’d never been in this situation before, surrounded so many animals, so close we could look into their eyes and touch their sides.  I wondered what they might be saying to each other about this boat, and these two humans.  They must have understood our wonder.  Maybe they enjoyed our attention.  Whatever the explanation for this exchange, something magical was going on that would never be forgotten.

As we watched, the dolphins moved around us like dancers in a well choreographed routine - the arching motion of breaking the surface for air, then diving again and ripping through the dark water effortlessly, only to surface again in seconds.  Others sped off at an angle and leaped clear of the ocean.  There were always three or four who would drift along beside the zodiac almost nudging it with their noses.   A group of four or five were separated from the group some distance away, apparently doing their own thing.  Must have been the teen-agers, pushing the limits of independence, away from the watchful eyes of mom and dad.  As the pod moved, we followed quietly and the dolphins seemed quite content to include us in their group, if only for a short time. 

The Queen of Burnaby, on her run from Comox to Powell River hadn’t missed the scene either.  She was on a convergent course with Tesseract and the Dolphins so the skipper swung the helm to port and she changed course to pass to the north of us.  As the boat leaned into the turn, an announcement was sounded over the public address and within seconds at least 100 excited passengers had gathered on the starboard rail to watch the show.  No doubt many cameras recorded the event.  Nature loves a show.

So there we all were.  Tesseract and her crew, sixty or seventy sleek dolphins, and a ferry load of travellers on this hot, breathless day on Georgia Straight.   Eventually, the dolphins headed southwest towards Middlenatch Island and Pam and I were left alone, the ferry long gone.  Tesseract was still moving slowly, the engine just above idle.  The water was calm again and the sun was hot.  We watched the dolphins till they disappeared, all the while not saying a word, because we had encountered something so powerful, so perfect, that words seemed inadequate. 

Sharing the dolphins’ space, being in their group for a while sparked my awareness of humans’ precarious dance with mother nature.  It suggested that those animals lived in their environment far better than humans do.  Dolphins cooperate with each other, look after each well, use just enough to get by, and don’t leave a lot behind.  We don’t. And I had this sense that their world could be so changed by what we did.  They had no control over us, but we could have a profound effect on them.  We have to be more careful.

Several hours later, Tesseract fell into the welcoming arms of Comox Harbour and we settled in.  We kayaked over to the spit and cooled off with a swim.  It felt like a dream.  The next day Pam and I bought weekend tickets to the Filberg Festival.  We went out for diner, visited with friends, and listened to a lot good musicians for three days.  Their soulful tunes and the artsy displays took our attention away from nature for a while, and we had a great time in Comox.  

But the dolphins stole the show - no contest.