Full beach

The pod

Today is really busy here on the beach. Paul, Stephane, Armelle, Pat, Florence, Stephan, and Nicola are here as well as Philippe whenever he can. It's an eating and drinking day. Chill out.

11:00 a.m.
The dolphins come up from the south. They are far out, hunting.
At the same time Flo and Pat together with his kids and his brother and friend arrive. I invite anyone to come, now! Immediately! After quick coordination Pat's brother Nicola drops the toolbox and runs to the kayak. We row out there.

The dolphins appear every 5 min or so, take a breath and then take the deep dive, back curved and the tail fin sticks well out of the water before it disappears.

They are swimming in a line, raking up the sea floor.

We follow them for a kilometer, but don't swim together.

12:30
Here they come again - it's the return. This time Pat joins me. We paddle out there, I give it all. Pat tries hard too. We follow the group. There are five adults and they are traveling fast. We can't catch up. We stay a steady 10m behind over a period of 20 min without decreasing the distance. We return exhausted.

2 p.m.
The rest of the pod appears on the horizon. Stephan, Nicola's friend, joins me.
He goes in first and meets up with the group. The group passes. He mounts the kayak, we row a little and then I go in.

This is yesterday's pod. The young one is all over and around me. The big ones swim around me. We do 150 m together and then they move on. When I look up I expect to see Stephan in the kayak next to me but he is not there. I turn around. Here they come, Stephan with Stephane in the boat. She has tried to meet up swimming all the way out here, missing them. So she took a hike.

Nice guy but in a hurry

We try a threesome in the kayak but it doesn't work. We are too heavy, take water and are unstable. Stephane exits, the boat tilts and I'm in the water as well. Splash !

Now we have 100m to catch up, I give it all and a while later we are with them again. The dolphins are back hunting and are not interested in us.

We leave them and row back.

All this rowing today is getting us in top shape and on top we have a killer sun tan. I wished I could do this very thing for work...