Things that go squeak in the night
21 October 2011 | Selat Manipa
Andy
Night watch again, and this time I am prepared, headphones on listening to Angela Katerns and Wendy Harmer, ‘Is it just me”. The podcast playing is about things beeping at you, washing machines that sing songs when finished, cars that bleep you till you put your seat belt on, microwaves letting you know your dinner is ready. On night watch the autohelm also beeps, when the wind direction veers too much from the desired course, or the GPS when it loses satellite connection. So apart from the suggestive conversation about bleeping electronic devices playing directly into my brain, courtesy of ABC Radio National, I have a legitimate reason to occasionally lift the headphones and check my own world’s bleeping/beeping status. An unusual squeaking -it is a bleep? – penetrates the Aussie world view to bring me back to the Selat Manipa. It’s not the autohelm, and the GPS has full satellite coverage, good grief, what is that sound, should I wake Tony?
I check the sails, I know that special squeak the main halyard makes, it’s not that? Crossly I replace my headphones and try to pick up where Ange and Wendy have got to, fumbling with the replay button in the dark. Damn, there it is again – a high pitched squeak, and now fully focused on the dark Indonesian night, I catch a large shape surfacing right beside the boat, out of the corner of my eye, followed by what looks to be an illuminated torpedo track coming straight for Irish Melody. My own startled squawk wakes the Skip immediately (He’s been napping on deck, it’s just gone 10.00 pm)and in the few seconds it takes for him to reach consciousness I realize we have not inadvertently blundered into night training for the Indonesian Navy, but have been joined by a group of beautiful dolphins, playing and surfing around the boat. Up at the bow we can see 4-5 illuminated shapes as the dolphins swerve backwards and forwards, diving beneath IM to resurface on the other side. They shimmer and shine with intense bio-luminosity, their shapes fully discernible to at least 20 metres depth, their effortless wakes in the water also shimmering. Tony and I watch mesmerized for an amazing ten minutes. Occasionally the dolphins surface to quickly grab a breath, and one of them squeaks at us each time. He/she had been the source of the unexplained ‘bleeping’- re-calling me to the here and now.
We have seen many dolphins so far on this trip, a very large pod of over 50 at one stage, but never like this at night, when they are lit up so beautifully. The attached photo is of dolphins swimming at the bow during the day, we couldn’t/didn’t want to miss any of the magic of that night time moment by diving down into the cabin to get the camera.