Anti-Social Dolphins!
Sun’s Out, Fins… In?
After a downright miserable day weather-wise yesterday, it was great to get out onto the water again in glorious sunshine! With bright blue skies and emerald waters for the most part of today, you could have sworn someone had moved our office into the Mediterranean! The Moray Firth was looking her best, and with big grins spread across our faces at the sight, we were in high spirits hoping for some great sightings to round off the atmosphere… but the dolphins were MIA! Or, at least they were until the afternoon! The first trips from Spirit and Mischief both went out to little fanfare animal-wise, which had us wondering where all the party had gone! It wasn’t until Mischief returned early from a distinctly empty Chanonry to scout the Beauly Firth that we found our first fins of the day! Kesslet and Scoopy were parked up past Clachnaharry, in the words of skipper John, “being very lazy”. They seemed to head further up the firth too after Mischief left them to return back to the marina, because when Spirit went out again at 12, they were nowhere to be found! That had us quaking in our boots; it wasn’t just the cold wind that had started to come in making us shiver!
Found You!
Luckily, the 12.30pm Mischief trip found a few more friends out past Chanonry, and Spirit’s luck turned with the 2pm trip. The Beauly Firth’s hottest little couple arrived back in style, heading towards the river just as the boat was leaving the river mouth past Carnarc Point. They swam at quite the speed, straight into the river and round past the harbour in a flash; but we were happy just to have them within eye’s sighting distance! We caught them briefly again coming back out of the river as we were concluding the trip, where they came right under our bow and across the right hand side of the boat and off behind us. With the glare pressing on the water at that point it was difficult to spot them at a distance, and it wasn’t until they were upon us that we saw them! We hoped they’d stick about for the 4pm, and thankfully they did, but in the worst place in the firth! Of all the places to find them, we found them out at Meikle Mee, where the wind was whipping up quite the tide around the buoy. We glimpsed their surfacing fins as they surfed the waves on our way out and back in too, but they certainly weren’t much in the mood for saying hello today! Hopefully we’ll see a little bit more of them tomorrow; maybe an early night for our dolphins will sort out their bad attitude!
New Friend?
The river was home to a strange little visitor for the best part of today! A lone harbour seal, a youngster, greeted almost every sailing that went out today straight out of the marina! Hanging about in the water just off the rocky wall, the little seal had a good old look at the boat every time it passed, and seemed to show no fear of any others in the area. At one point, he even made friends with the local otters, who scarpered when the boat arrived, but for a moment you could see the pair of them in the water quite happily next to one another! I wonder what he was doing there; maybe with the dolphins’ absence, he was capitalizing on all the big tasty fish!