8/3/26: Aquatic extravaganza

When Dd and I got up for our 3–6 am "sunrise" watch this morning, there was no sun to be seen. Outside of the 200-meter radius directly around the boat, nothing could be seen other than the soft grey of fog. The water was a glassy calm which only reflected and amplified the greyness that enveloped us; the only respite from the dull greenness were the sharp lines of an equally grey shark that followed us for all of 20 meters before deciding we had nothing to offer. The fog lay in large droplets on Dd's glasses and my eyebrows, and it felt as though we were transiting through a permanent, unmoving fixture of the land, not something that can grow or lift or be blown away by the wind. Whether it was permanent and we motored out of it or it did in fact lift or get blown away around midday, it did eventually clear and leave us in a vast expanse of glassy ocean. This sudden expanding of our world left an awe for just how big the world was. As the air heated with the newly found sun, the wind started to build from behind, so we decided to rig the spinnaker pole to connect to the genoa so that we could hold it out wing on wing. As we were setting up the pole, there was a crashing noise in the wake of the boat. A small pod of dolphins had taken to jumping and breaching. At this point dolphins have become somewhat routine to the point where people won't usually come on deck to see them, but something about just how playful and happy this pod seemed washed both Dd and me with a giddy feeling. The breaching behavior of the dolphins had also become a bit of a precursor to the arrival of larger aquatic creatures, so we had our fingers crossed. About an hour later, after Dd and I had changed watch with Helene and Nathan, they reported something large jumping in the distance. By the time everyone was on deck, the boat was surrounded by a pod of whales fluking and slapping their fins against the water. Then, in a sudden rush of water, one of the whales' heads broke the surface of the water and led the rest of its body up into the air until only the tips of its fin were left touching the water as though tiptoeing before coming crashing back down to the water. This behavior, rarely with as much grace as the first, was soon to be emulated by the rest of the pod of whales, which had amassed to over a dozen whales crashing around the boat. The dolphins also continued to play and breach around the boat, all of which was happening so close to the boat that you could smell the quite unpleasant breaths of the whales and dolphins. This went on for half an hour before eventually starting to taper off and being replaced by a growing wind which allowed us to shut off the motor for the first time in a few days. With all members on board slightly stunned with the events of the afternoon, we settled into our usual routine of dinner and night watches.