We (almost) never see dolphins.

David Ryan

David Ryan is a boat builder and USCG licensed master captain. He is the owner of Sailing Montauk and skipper of Montauk''s charter sailing catamaran MON TIKI You can follow him on Twitter @CaptDavidRyan

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4 Responses

  1. Burt Likko says:

    A whole raft of dolphins is a very impressive sight indeed. The brave ones like to surf in a vessel’s bowshock. The ocean looks like it’s boiling, and the joy of seeing so many of these remarkable animals at once is an electric glow on the body like St. Elmo’s fire.Report

  2. Mad Rocket Scientist says:

    I remember when I was in the Navy, we’d see dolphins all the time while deployed. Granted, this was the South Pacific, but they were common.

    The coolest was when a pod of dolphins was near where our LCAC were operating. They would chase us, & if they could get in front of us, they would jump up & bounce off the bow bag.

    Yes, I was a mechanic on a $20M cetacean moonwalk/bouncy house.Report

  3. David Ryan says:

    Burt, MRS —

    In other places, both on Mon Tiki and other boats, I’ve had the all-together delightful experience of dolphins riding the bow wave. The urge these animals have to make contact is the best explanation that I have for why they are regarded with delight.

    But where we sail I’ve never once seen this behavior. My best guess is that the dolphins come into the sound to feed. That’s what I make of the way they move, both individually and as a pod. So far I’ve never had them come up to the boat. They do what they do and we sail by marveling and delight.Report

    • Mad Rocket Scientist in reply to David Ryan says:

      Back in the day, we’d hardly go a week without seeing a pod pacing us.

      Near ACU-5, there was a local pod that very much liked to play with the hovercraft, even waiting in the surf for us to come back, after we landed on one of the training beaches. The thing that amazed me the most was how, even though we were operating the hovercraft in locations we did not normally operate in (e.g. Horn of Africa, near Australia), the presence of a hovercraft got the same response from whatever dolphins were nearby.Report