Ah....a fine trip. Very strange and erratic winds. We ate some good curries, record garlic consumption, and relentless discussions on physics, mythology, catamarans, junks, steel, song and poem interpretation, hermeunitics (lit crit), and on and on. One of my favorite lines of the trip is as follows: "a straight line is nothing but a circle with an infinate radius" Don't fear, I don't get it either, but I think it is true anyway.
We had every sort of weather: a light gale to dead calm, and every wind in between. More than our share of light winds though, beat up my sails a bit. Shame that.
The stangest thing was that at one point we were accosted by porpoises. It is hard to describe what they were doing or why. But they were bumping the boat, literally hitting us with, I suppose, their heads. It was a pod of the biggest porpoises I've ever seen--at least twelve feet long, big.
Why bump the boat like that? Were they mad? We had just started trailing a fishing line. Were they warning us, teasing us, playing with us, flirting with us??? I can't say, but no dolphin or whale has ever hit me intentionally. And they did it ten to fifteen times. Strange and slightly unnerving. It was loud.
No close calls with freight or fishers.
I studied the stars and really really enjoyed learning the progressions of the constellations, loved how they matched up so closely with Greek mythology: Orion chasing the Pleides, and being followed by his dog Sirius and the scorpion he had fought.
The first thing I did on arriving to the Philippines was to buy two hamburgers, which cost me a whole $ 0.60, and a coke, which cost me $0.20. I was satisfied
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5 comments:
Wow, that is strange with the dolphins. My cousin has never reported that behavior to me on her travels...nor have I really read or seen anything about it on a show before, and we watch a lot of such shows.
There is a great book called, "Survive the Savage Sea," by Dougal Robertson. It is about a family sailing from the Galapagos for Polynesia and they are attacked by killer whales and sunk in under five minutes. Amazing. Great read. But whales do sometimes attack and as far as I understand, we don't necessarily understand what provokes them. I was circled by a whale for fifteen minutes once as I was playin the guitar. It was great! One of the coolest experiences of my life, but it wasn't threatening me, just looking up, circling, and listening, I suppose.
I think whales and other such critters of the sea are a lot more intelligent than most give them credit for. I often see dolphins swimming rather close to shore in my state. I could sit there all day and watch them. A whale is something I have not had the pleasure to see in the wild, yet. I know killer whales can live up to their name. I actually did see one documentary a while back on agression with dolphins too. But not a story you see on a regular basis.
Personally, I think they are all pissed off at us for mucking up their environment and trying to hunt them into extinction. That would piss me off! I often wonder if that is not why you keep hearing more and more stories of elphants going nuts and killing people too.
Yeah, I've heard about the elephant aggression as well. So interesting and telling of modernity. I've heard that the bottlenosed dolphins are the most aggressive of the dolphins, and, generally speaking, killer whales are the most docile--with regard to the relationships with each other. I'd like to come back as a killer whale, I think.
And I'd love to learn more about the emergence of the giant squid as well. So great that their are still mythical leviathans still lurking in the deep.
I have been watching the giant squid stories like a hawk. I love it! More and more film/photos are coming in as they figure out more tricks and hot locations. Amazing animals they are.
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