Bioluminescent Dolphins at night!!!

Well I have just seen the coolest thing I think I have ever seen in my life. On watch last night I noticed that the wave splashes against the hull glowed green. That is from bioluminescent plankton that has made its way into the Mediteranean from the Atlantic through the Gibraltar channel. I had to run one of the engines because the wind had dropped and the batteries were low, and the glow from the plankton made a bright streak behind the prop that was running. Every now and then I would see a streak of light in the water that seemed to start from the boat and flash outwards. When Jason came on watch at 2AM, he said that is dolphins! So I grabbed the big flashlight, and sure enough – each one of those streaks was a dolphin. Shortly an entire pod was pacing the boat, with glowing green trails through the water with a dolphin at the head of each one, moving back and forth under the boat, out to the sides, in front, back under…. That was the coolest thing I have ever seen. Sadly it was too dark for any pictures, but I am sure that the web has some good shots from folks with much more expensive cameras than ours.

Right now we are on the last 6 hours to get in to Gibraltar. The wind prediction was accurate for a while yesterday, but early this morning it was completely, totally wrong. It predicted strong winds from the NE, and what we have is light winds from the West. So we are motoring again to make the last 6 hours westward to Gibraltar.

Getting through the Gibraltar Straights is a tricky thing. The current is against us, as the Atlantic fills the Med throught this channel. As well, the strength of the current varies wildly depending on the tide. So we need to wait for a decent E wind at 2 hours after high tide in order to get through. The prediction (ha ha) is calling for this combination on Thursday. I am really really looking forward to getting out of the Mediteranean and into the Atlantic. The Med in winter is a total bitch. In winter it is a maelstrom of unpredictable strong winds, blowing mostly from the West. The atlantic this time of year is much more predictable. This means that we can set sail for a particular wind direction and strength and trust that it will stay that way for a while. In the med, we would put up full sail because the wind came down – and EVERY TIME, within half an hour we were pulling it back down again. The wild unpredictability and strength is the reason we don’t see many other sailboats out here.