I have been trying to keep all of our adventures in chronological order, but every once in a while something so cool happens I feel compelled to post it when it happens. Yesterday (Wednesday) falls into that category, what happened was just so cool that I could not wait to share it!

Yesterday started at 4:00 AM and it started with a definite chill in the air – not from the temperature but from attitudes. We had been waiting for a weather window to move from Bequia to St. Lucia. I had been watching the weather, reviewing all with weather info I could get from multiple sources for the last two weeks. This all culminated in a decision to leave on Wednesday and we would, contrary to the popular route by cruisers, travel up the windward (east) side of St. Vincent.

In my mind the reasons for choosing this route were: 1) We had a 3-4 day forecast of mild weather, 15-18 knots of wind and 4 foot seas. 2) The distance was shorter overall. 3) The winds would be more consistent and we would not have to be constantly be adjusting the sails as the trade winds interacted with the land mass of St. Vincent – hence, it would be faster. 4) We would not have to deal with the nastiness that is notorious at the north end of St. Vincent, also documented by friends of ours on their recent trip – 35 knot winds and 20 foot seas for 90 minutes of the passage across the channel.

Well to make a long story short, a friend convinced Barry we would DIE if we went up the windward side. OK, maybe die is a bit of an exaggeration, but he convinced Barry it would be better for the boat and crew to travel up the leeward (west) side of St. Vincent. I was annoyed that Barry was disregarding my route suggestions in favor of those of a friend he really doesn’t know all that well, and to make matters worse he sails a catamaran!

I became even more annoyed as the sun came up and the wind (on the west side of St. Vincent) all but died. We had 70 miles to cover and we had to arrive while there was still enough light to set the anchor – we needed to average 7 knots and now we were barely moving! There was so little wind we had to furl the genoa sail and start the engine. Starting the engine = $$$$$!

Later, as I sat in the cockpit still stewing about what I viewed as Barry’s betrayal of my opinion and weather analysis, I saw something odd off the starboard (right) bow, about 400 yards ahead. When I didn’t see anything else I decided to go down and check on Lilly who we had given seasickness meds to when we set off – but that is another story. As I was about to step down into the companion way I saw something odd off the port (left) bow, about 300 yards ahead. As I continued to watch I saw a big fin – I yelled to Barry “FIN” and pointed, never taking my eyes off of it. Well the fin was followed by a long black back and finally a perfectly shaped WHALE TAIL! Alas, even though we continued to watch in earnest we never saw another sign of the whale again and I was beginning to doubt what I had seen, so I asked Barry what he had seen – he reported the same thing.

OK, my day is getting better!

It is probably because we were both still hoping to get another glimpse of the whale that we spotted the turbulence on the surface of the water about a quarter of a mile ahead off our port side. Since we were motoring anyway we decided to go check it out. What an awesome sight! A pod of 100+ dolphins and they were obviously feeding. As we got close we turned the boat to parallel the direction they were traveling and I ran for the camera. You can not imagine our delight when they decided to come over to say hi and play in the wake of our bow! What an awesome experience, I was sitting on the bow with the camera just 4-5 feet away from these amazing creatures!

We stayed around for about 40 minutes. In that time they would come visit the boat, then they would all dive and disappear only to reappear in the distance feeding, then they would head back to the boat again. This happened three times! Regretfully, we had places to be and people to see so we set a course for Rodney Bay.

We smiled all the way! No more bad feelings about the route decision – fate was plotting our course and our encounter with the dolphins. All worries about arriving in daylight and whether our windless would work when we got there were forgotten.

P.S. I have some awesome video, but need to learn how to do video editing before I can upload it to the blog. I will post if on my Facebook page soon.