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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A Day on board by Rachel

Dolphin Chase!
29th June 2010 - This is our second day in Louisa Reef. We ran out of fresh meat and what we have left is only sausages and some bacon and ham. At 6.45am, Eric jumped in the water to go fish hunting with the spear gun. After more than an hour in the water, he came back with 2 Groupers and 1 Banana Fish! They were all almost full grown so that should cover our lunch and dinner.


Eric's early morning fish catch

Around 9.30am, I was doing some cleaning with Hans in the boat when Eric said "DOLPHINS!!!" I automatically ran to get my camera, followed by Eric and Kevin. We ran out of the boat to take some shots of the dolphins. They were at least 50m - 100m from the boat. It was a school of Spinner Dolphins. Looked so elegant every time they come out on the surface. The baby Spinner was trying to jump as high as she could.
They moved behind us, so Kevin said, "let's chase them with the dinghy!"
The three of us, jumped in the dinghy, untied the dinghy, started the outboard engine and gave Hans a shout that we are going to chase the dolphins!
9.35am, the 3 of us were Dolphin Chasing! We were 10m away from the school when the outboard engine died on us. Eric and Kevin think as fast as they can on what might be the problem and figured out it has something to do with the connection tube from the outboard engine to the fuel tank. So they both hurriedly change the connection in order not to lose sight of the dolphins!
We were lucky that the dolphins decided to play with us!! After we got the engine running again we didn't have to go so far, they swam under the dinghy and in front of us. They didn't jump in the air but were breaking the surface. There were at least 4 of them playing around us. They were beautiful fish! Eric stopped the engine and we took as many photo's as we could. Then after 3 minutes, the dolphins moved slowly to another spot so we followed them again. This time, they were still in their playful mood, so again a few of them decide to make our day and swam under and in front of us again! This time they jumped on the surface in pairs and at one point there were 3 of them jumping at the same time! These are precious moments that I will never forget!




In front of us the rest of the school of dolphins were still swimming on the surface in formation. It was a really beautiful sight! At this very moment, when I am typing the sentence above, (11.45am) another school of dolphins appeared again. I heard a sound like someone is doing a breast stroke, and I looked out at sea and saw again dolphins!!!!! I just finished taking another set of photos of them! Wish I have the dinghy with me, I would have another Dolphin Chase.
I finished cooking lunch, and now waiting for the guys to come back on board from diving. Cooked the groupers and banana fish in Thai Curry. Hans offered me another cooking job in August for 3 weeks which I will think about it since I might still be in the Philippines or at least still plan to be there or another place? Will see how it goes. I like it being at sea where all you hear is just the sea water splashing on the boat. I am a movie junkie and would definitely need some good movies once in a while, but hey, I can always watch those when I am on land and how many chances do I get to be at sea anyways? (trying to comfort myself) LOL!
One important fact that I learn today is that, SHARKS are scared of DOLPHINS! I better learn more about dolphins in order to scare the sharks away! J
3.10pm
The guys arrived back on board around 1pm after a 2 hours dive. It was raining heavyly when they got back. I took the jerry can out to collect the rain water for the tank. ALK has 600 ltr water in two tanks 300 ltr each and we finished one tank in 4 days!! We managed to collect 150 ltr of rain water in this shower. So hopefully we can manage till we reach KK.

All hands and buckets on deck to catch as much water as we can

We ate lunch around 2.30pm and the curry tasted good in the cold weather. It was still drizzling when we had our lunch but we could see another shower coming our way! Right after we finished lunch the second rain start falling. So now we are just in the boat, doing our thing. Hans is currently doing some espresso for the guys while Eric and Kevin try to fix some gear.

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