You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Boating with Dolphins!
Ocean fish are prehistoric monsters that have not changed in millions of years. Bulging eyes, scaly bodies, bony exoskeletons.
When Hollywood is thinking new movie monster, you have no farther to look than the mighty ocean for inspiration.
Then there is the dolphin.
An ethereal creature, smooth and hydrodynamic. It’s voice is a laugh. It’s face a smile. They kill sharks and dance on the waves and star in their own TV shows.
Sunday afternoon. We are taking in the splendor of Southern California.
It’s an 80 degree San Diego sun-shine-kind-a-day!
The bay is sparkling and the air refreshing, filled with a taste of salt and a blast of excitement.
My best buddy is at the helm. He is standing like an ancient navigator, wind blowing his salt and pepper hair back.
He has one hand on the steering wheel, and one hand on the windshield as he steers his 21 foot boat around a bed of kelp.
Along for the ride, his 23-year-old son, and my daughter, who is taking a break from college orientation.
What better way to relax than to power boat across the Pacific, breathe in life, bask in the possibilities of America.
We are a mile off shore. To the west, the ocean is vast and forever. To the east, the beauty of San Diego looms on the hill.
The swells are a good 3 to 4 feet and the boat is rocking like a cork in a jacuzzi.
My buddy stops the boat and the serenity washes over us.
The engine is idling, but the solitude of the sea is tangible.
The moment feels awe-inspiring, like something noteworthy is about to take place.
“OK, whose up for swimming?” he says with a smile.
I look around. There’s no life guard on duty. There’s no spray painted sign that says no diving. There’s no rules at all.
My daughter pulls off her wrap. “I’m in!”
“Let me get a shot of you both diving in,” my buddy says.
Why not.
I move to the side of the boat. It is bobbing like Mr. Toad’s wild ride.
Up and down, rolling into the swell and then back on top of the wave. It’s like jogging on a trampoline that is floating on a lazy river.
I am having tremendous trouble keeping my balance.
I get to the edge of the boat. Standing on top of this narrow ledge seems crazy. It’s wet and slippery.
My buddy tells me to clear the idling motor a foot away from me.
Good idea, I think to myself.
My daughter makes her way to the stern and climbs on.
The boat is swaying. We are both struggling to maintain balance. We are like two drunk carp lumbering on the back of the transom.
My buddy has his iphone at the ready.
OK. On three. he shouts.
1. 2. 3.
I jump. My goal is to give him a cool picture and not fractured my shins.
I want to show case my inner Mark Spitz as I enter the blue Pacific, a dive captured for all eternity.
But this dive is all about timing the wave. I need to push-off the boat at the apex of the wave. Unfortunately, my buddy says 3 when the boat is somewhere on the way up. I push-off, but my balance is worse than a hobo on Night Train wine.
I feel my feet slip and I look like a grade school kid about to do a belly flop. I am Bambi on that ice pond, my legs flying out from under me.
In the moment afforded me from 3 feet, I correct my posture and at least dive in head first.
The water is icy. Parts of my anatomy shout angrily.
“WTF you doing to us boy?”
I pop up and grab some crystal clear air. Salt water is on my lips. It is a sudden reminder of vacations long ago.
The boat is 5 feet away, but looks much farther than that. I have a sudden urge to panic, to want to grab onto the boat. I wonder what’s swimming below me, around me. Don’t think about it.
I fight the urge to swim to the boat allowing my body to acclimate to the sudden cold.
I look away from the shore. All I see is the horizon. Me and a gigantic void of interminable water. By simply looking west I am the only man on Earth. I am small and insignificant. If so inclined, the sea could devour me whole like I was a raisin in the mouth of a lion.
I turn back to the boat. My vision is filled with friends and family.
My daughter is still on the transom. Our synchronization was hardly the stuff of Olympic dreams.
“Is it cold?” she asks.
“Freezing,” I reply spitting salt water out of my mouth.
“I love cold,” she says.
“Then you’ll love this.”
“On three,” my buddy shouts again.
“1.2.3.”
She times the wave just right, pushing off while the boat is at its peak.
Her legs are together, her hands tight at the top. She does a perfect dive into the water.
She pops up with a huge smile on her face.
Her light blue eyes are piercing as she rises from the dark void.
My buddy is on the boat smiling. “That was an awesome dive. I got that!”
“You guys get together in the water”, he says.
He focuses and takes our picture. It’s a great shot having a nice father / daughter moment in the middle of a vast ocean on a splendid afternoon in Eden.
We spend a few minutes swimming in the middle of the Pacific, the San Diego cliffs so large, they look like we could touch them from where we are. The sky is blue, dotted with low clouds, puffy and free, coming and going as easily as the tide.
We boat to San Diego bay. The city is modern and angular. It is filled with glass towers and symbols of Navy superiority.
S.D is a HUGE Navy town.
We cruise by an active air craft carrier. There are underwater fences around it preventing us from getting to close.
We marvel at its size. A floating city is an accurate description.
We cross the bay to the Midway. It’s a retired air craft carrier, now a museum. People are on the top looking down at us as we slowly approach its gigantic hull.
As we pass below, the sun is blotted out in the sky. The ship rises like a gigantic apartment building above us.
I tilt my head back and see the deck covered with helicopters and jets. It’s amazing to think that air craft so large look so tiny upon its deck.
We motor up to the massive vessel, so close we can almost touch it. It’s hull is steel, thick and formidable. It’s a grey that projects power.
Beside it is the statue of the soldier kissing the nurse on the day World War II ends. It is so incredible to see it from the water, from the boat, alone in our tiny universe of friends and family. There are people at this exhibit, taking pictures and milling around. These land lubbers stare at us, perhaps envious that we have our own private viewing platform from my buddy’s boat idling a few feet away.
We will dock at a fancy restaurant in Coronado, one of the upscale zip codes in S.D. We walk into the restaurant like rock stars covered with salt and sun screen. I notice that other patrons have come in more pedestrian forms of transportation.
How Boring. How Ordinary. How Average.
This is a special day where every mile is another memory. The sea and swimming and the sights.
But on this day of days, there is one moment that supersedes all others.
On the way to nowhere in particular, while motoring around sea weed off shore, someone screams “Look.”
At first it’s alarming.
But as the visual comes into focus, we quickly understand how amazing it is.
A school of dolphin surrounds us.
Our boat is easily going 25 miles an hour through aggressive ocean chop.
Hundreds of dolphins are easily matching our pace, then blowing past us like flesh torpedoes.
The numbers are difficult to quantify because each dolphin breaches the surface for a second or two and then disappears under the waves.
We decide there are at least 100 dolphin around us. There are probably twice that number. There are baby dolphins launching through the surf, slowly rotating in the air, showing us their dark backs and lighter colored stomachs.
Then the bigger dolphins blast out of the surf, catching a ray of sunshine, accelerating into the water like a bullet.
They are in the boat’s wake, just under the surface. They are black, perhaps 5 feet long, surfing playfully.
It’s as if they are looking at us looking at them.
They are beautiful.
We all grab iphones and begin shooting this incredible site that we know can end as quickly as it came upon us.
“I’ve been out here hundreds of times,” my buddy says with a smile. “I’ve seen 2 or 3 or 4. I’ve never seen this many.”
He is one big smile. He has an iphone in one hand and he is snapping video off the bow. He is driving the boat with one hand and holding onto the greatest memory of his boating life with the other.
This moment is spectacular. It’s a shooting star captured in slow motion.
I am taking pictures wildly, constantly hitting the photo button trying to guess where Flipper is going to jump next. I have a lot of pictures of the water. I also have a lot of frames filled with majestic creatures, airborne, captured in time, between waves, smiling at us, showing us their magnificence.
It goes on for 10 minutes. We circle them and they circle us.
It’s like an aquatic play date of two species that want to know more about the other.
The dolphin are playful, nimble as they dance upon the waves like marine ballerina.
They all come to the surface in unison creating a fantastic, breath stealing moment. Then they submerge in an aquatic game of hide and go seek.
Our boat is filled with smiles and awe. We all know that we have been blessed by the fortuitous Gods to have intersected this moment in time. It feel so perfect, so wonderfully peaceful. Not many people get to share a dolphin’s play ground.
Then, as quickly as this filament in the fabric of time brought us together, it was gone.
The water became serene and blue and silent.
No more baby dolphins jumping or surfing behind our boat. No more smiling adults waving at us with their flippers from the boat’s wake.
They were gone.
The feeling in the boat was wonderment.
We were all smiling, breathless, knowing that was a life moment to be cherished.
We will get to the restaurant and our waitress tries to take our drink order.
She has an island quality about her and she asks me if I am having a good day. Perhaps because I look like I’ve been bathing in sea water.
I pull out my phone and show her video of dolphins, hundreds of them, dancing like sea nymphs all around me.
“My day? This was my day.”
Her face transforms into a gleeful smile. It’s as if she has seen the Holy Grail.
“I’m a surfer,” she says. “This is so cool. Oh My God. This is awesome.”
“Happened just a little bit from your restaurant,” I say.
“I’m jealous,” the surfer girl waitress will say clutching my iphone like it’s her new visual best friend.
“I have so much video,” I will tell her. “I am throwing dolphin video away.”
She laughs, handing me back my phone.
“Wow. That is so awesome.”
We all look at each other with wall to wall smiles.
We know.
Life’s Crazy™