Kyle said we could come back for snack seconds in the galley, as he called it. He told us that was the official name for the kitchen on a yacht, but he also mentioned a scullery and a mess. More boat talk. (The captain had already told us about the aft, which was the back, and the bow, which was the front of the boat, while Kyle had taught us that the head was a bathroom, which made absolutely no sense to me because it seemed like we used the head for the opposite end of our bodies!)
While Kyle was treating us to our latest batch of boat vocabulary words, (port, port bow, port quarter, starboard, starboard bow, starboard quarter and stern, which I’m not going to describe because I can’t remember any of it.) Anyway, while he was doing that, he handed out more bottles of water. The sun was out, and even with a very pleasant breeze, we were all feeling parched. Even the two bodyguards chose water that time, instead of beer.
It was at that time that Kyle recommended we all reapply our suntan lotion. Because drawing attention to it, made me aware that my skin was already reacting to the heavy doses of sunshine on ocean top.
After we creamed our bodies and drank more water, I finally used my binoculars for the first time: rolling water, a bit of white caps here and there, lots of sea birds, and six boats off in the distance. The captain wasn’t talking. I think he was taking a bathroom break, so the three men talked about the photos they’d gotten. I was the only one not to have taken a picture.
“We’re approaching another sighting,” the captain suddenly said, having climbed back on his post.
We once more rushed over to the side he told us to go to. (I can’t remember the nautical term, but I just followed the captain’s pointer finger.) This time, we saw a tail. The whale posed it up in the air for a moment, and then he was gone. Not a very spectacular performance, but it was okay because another pod of dolphins had decided to hang out with us for a while.
The rest of the trip was not quite as exciting. The whales had decided to stay down in the deep. The pod of dolphins soon deserted us. A lone sea lion swam by, giving us the eye, as if inspecting us to see if we were worth his time. We failed to be of interest.
The captain started talking about birds as we waited for any further whale showings. He gestured to lots of shearwaters, a cormorant, several pelicans, and a sea of seagulls, if you get the pun.
And if we’d taken a count, I know we might have gotten a prize for seeing the most dolphins, all of them the common dolphin, according to Captain Joe. How anything as beautiful and graceful as a dolphin can be called common, I’ll never understand. Ornithologists, the ones who named the dolphins that common name, shame on you!