Day 2 Westbound for Fremantle

Day 2 Common dolphins all around!  (Written on Feb 17, 2013)

It’s midnight, my feet hit the cabin floor and in five minutes I am alive and wide awake!   We are at sea again, I am so happy!   “What is the elixir?” I quandary while brushing my teeth…  The answer is not far away…

Resty has the starboard wheelhouse door open – the fresh warm air is irresistible and stepping on deck to see the night from the Portuguese bridge, I can clearly see it is a gorgeous night.  It’s moon-less, the sky is pitch black, but lit all-over by twinkling celestial “diamonds”.   The Milky Way comes past our mast, the Southern Cross and the Two Pointers are there port-side.  While concentrating on the sky – I hear two, now three “thwacks” that I know are not waves against the hull.  I am certain that we have dolphins bow-riding!  Then the punchy and unmistakable “puh-wih” of the exhalation and inhalation sequence sounds dolphins make as they surface to breathe.  Next streaks of white bubbles and phosphorescence whiz through the sea beside our good ship Whale Song towards the bow and even better, athletic bodies abeam on our starboard side leaping out of the water just below me!  I can see the distinctive white and cream cross-over body pattern in the ship’s lights – I  have the honoured company of two or three Short-beaked common dolphins!

So this is the elixir.  Friends to help you through the midnight shift!  How lucky am I?

Two lumes of light approximately 8 nm away are acquirable targets on our ARPA-enabled RADAR.  One vessel is at 8.07 nm and heading 14.6 degrees and the other is at 8.94 nm and travelling at 195.4 degrees.  They are moving at 5kts and 2kts, respectively and with all the lights glowing, these will be fishermen doing their thing.  I am addicted to listening and looking for the dolphins and do so by moving between monitoring the RADAR and the lumes visually from inside the wheelhouse and stepping out onto the Portuguese bridge, all the time wondering if they are still here.  In the end, we have 30 minutes of which I am aware of their company, it may well have been hours.  I thank my hearing, even over the constant summer crickets chirping in my right ear!

Near the end of my watch at 0233 we are 16.8 nm east of Gabo Island.  We are in Victorian waters and this is the most south-eastern point of continental Australia.  At 0710 when I pop out into the wheelhouse I see on the chart we have entered Bass Strait and gleaming in the sunlight is Point Hicks.  Two Shy Albatross and a flock of Flesh-footed Shearwaters flurry.  The rolling hills of southern Victoria are various shades of bluey-grey in a misty smudge of wavy and curvaceous lines of pleasing landform contours.

On the fly-bridge Maria calls out “We have dolphins coming!”  A huge pod of 200 common dolphins rockets towards us, sometimes 10 at a time leaping clear of the water!  They head directly to us, but pass both sides.  They are on a mission, perhaps there is good food elsewhere as another pod of common dolphins half an hour before had also travelled right past us from the starboard to the port side.  I am encouraged to think there must be much available food, if they are so distracted.  “The next pod, if they stay, I’ll go to the foremast and take photos from there”.  As I say this to Maria, at her left shoulder, another pod of approximately 100 animals barrels towards the bow from our 8 o’clock position.  Up the foremast, I scurry and with the wide-angle lens get the animals surging back and forth at the bow!  By days’ end, we have enjoyed and documented 4 pods of common dolphins of approximately 500 animals!

I love thumbing the bird book to check the details of the albatross species, how is their eye make-up? Do they have the underarm black notches characteristic of the Shy? Is it a juvenile with patchy plumage pigmentation?   It feels good to be in the presence of albatross again.

Lunch is pumpkin and feta quiche, rocket salad, salami, cheese and breads which I quickly put in a bowl to eat while on my 12-3pm watch in the wheelhouse.   We are en route to Port Welshpool to pick up Dr. Pete Gill, our blue whale colleague from Warnambool.  Our course is 244 degrees and we shall arrive in the wee hours of the morning.

What a great day, it is always a pleasure to “feel the boat move under my feet”!

Mich

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