A few years back I was working as crew on private yachts
sailing around the edges of the Atlantic ocean. Back then there was an
abundance of work both delivering bare-boats and crewing high-end charters. For
the most part the owners of vessels from 20ft to 362ft long kept me out of
trouble scrubbing decks and serving Cristal champagne to the guests (and myself
in the stew pantry) in Ports and at sea anywhere and everywhere between
Florida, Trinidad and Italy. It was a good, healthy life that I reminisce about
often. Footloose, fancy free and moving with the flow of work which had me
reaching for my passport on a weekly basis, I had racked up around 7,500
nautical miles in 12 months. Most of that mileage is attributed to a
trans-Atlantic crossing from St Maarten to Antibes, France.
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| Azores - Your Logo Goes Here |
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| Mid-Atlantic Sailing |
For weeks we saw nothing but blue-water horizons.
Occasionally a freight ship would thunder past but other than that the weather
advisory services kept us on track for a very smooth and uneventful crossing.
The order of the days rotated around your watch-keeping duties, sleep and other
sanity-maintaining entertainment like movies, card games or fishing. All the
excitement was left to the wildlife watching. At any moment you could hear a
watch-keeper shout “WHALES!” or “DOLPHINS!” which would send the off-duty crew
scrambling for their cameras and up on deck to hang over the bow taking
pictures and soaking up the awe. There is no doubt about the impact wildlife
have on humans, as well as the impact humans have on wildlife. Sailing around
the Azores, where we stopped for a mid-crossing drink, was filled with encounters
with whales and lots of scrimshaw.
From the Azores we headed towards mainland Europe for my first time. Clear blue skies
were slowly turning dull and grey. Each day as we approached the Gibraltar
Straight this seemed to be getting worse and it ended up taking me about three days to figure
out what it was. It was the smog from the mainland. I did't want to go there, really. We charged on through the guts
of the Gibraltar Straight which was like a 16 lane wide super-highway where the
confidence of Captains and crew are put to the test. I was on watch that night
with the Engineer and all I wanted to do was simultaneously scream with exhilaration
and crawl into a corner of the deck and cry as colossal freighters and cruise-liners
lit up like Christmas trees towered over our 110ft sailboat as we battled for
our space in the parade. Unbelievably, there were tiny little boats running
across the flow between the headlands of the straight, a very high risk game of
chicken which they had no doubt been doing for generations. On the interior of
the Mediterranean it was finally time for me to sleep.
In the darkness, out the porthole of my cabin, I could see the
wake of the boat being highlighted with bright streamers of bioluminescence. It
was the most magical thing I had ever seen, I thought. That was until I saw the
dolphins. As they raced through the water alongside our boat they left long
tubes of bioluminescence behind them like vapour trails through the inky water.
From above deck you could see the dolphins coming towards the boat from about
50m away to race up alongside and jump out of the bow-wave coated in the glowing
water. I was nearly wetting myself with excitement. An occasion in the
Caribbean where our boat sailed through a smack of flashing jellyfish comes a
close second in my all-time favourite wildlife experiences.
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| One must feed one's self |
The next day, still riding high on the excitement of last
night, I again raced up to the deck with camera in hand to the call of whales.
In the distance it looked like a pod of black whales on the move, bobbing up
and down in the swell as they take their breath. The deckhand and I raced to
the bow to photograph the amazing event when the reality of our geographic location
hit us both like sledgehammer. You’re in big lagoon now, essentially, with
human population on every border. They weren’t black whales, they were around
40 black storage drums, dumped at sea, bobbing around in the waves. Wave as you
go past, this won't be the only pollution you see through the haze.
