Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

St John’s Azores Leg

Day 6

Saturday, June 21

Noon Position: 43 31 57N 32 38.4W

Course: SE

Wind: WSW 12-20

Noon Miles: 154

Total Miles: 911

Today dolphins came to play at Moli’s bow three times that I noticed and likely at other times when we were working the boat or below. I pity the poor animals. They charge toward Mo at torpedo speed, leaping clear from the water and reentering without a splash, as if tumbling in the bow wave of a boat will be the most fun they’ve had all week if they can just get there in time. They are like children in the car on the way to Disney Land. Hurry, hurry, when will we get there?

And when they arrive at Mo’s bow, they have to slow     way      down.

Because Mo just isn’t fast—even at 7.5 knots touching 8–next to a dolphin; because Mo is made of molasses and a dolphin, nitroglycerin.

They arrive in twos and threes and fives and eights. They roll and surf in the boat’s wake, diving under and resurfacing on the other side with a grace impossible to describe. But all is without pizazz or that effortless, full body sparkly glee they had on the approach. Because there’s just nothing to it. Because playing with Mo is like taking candy from a baby; it’s nice to have candy, but the game’s too easy. A few leaps later and they are bored. Soon they wander off to find…

To find what?

From our vantage this neighborhood consists of a few shearwaters, a few dolphins, a few jelly fish, a vast amount of heaving, cobalt blue water, a milky sky, a very few entirely uncommitted clouds, one cool white sun, one gray boat, and nothing else.

Seriously, nothing else.

A dolphin lives its entire life in the vast cobalt blue part of that sequence, essentially in an open space that, all combined, takes up two thirds of the planet. No forests, no mountains, no freeways, no houses, no city library, no coffee shops, no national parks; no rocks to hide under, no island to roost upon, no place to sit and take a rest. No place to call one’s own.

Because around here, it’s just water. Open, undifferentiated, everlasting water of about 10,000 feet in depth, and a dolphin can survive in just the top layer, just the top layer of an essentially limitless expanse.

Where is home in all this? How does one make way, and to where and when and why?

And why do they depart Mo so soon?

These are important questions. I shout from the bow to the nearest of them, “Hey you, come’er! We gotta converse this over.” Flipper could talk, after a fashion; why not this one?

I get nothing for my troubles. Not even a wink as he swims away.

It’s too bad. I like dolphins. I think we could be friends. But for that to happen, they need to stick around.