Got on the "Dolphin TLC":
With Captain Nancy and Marc, the crewmate:
And Tiffany the dog:
And Pluto, the other dog:
Yes, today I spent the morning on the ocean, experiencing one of the most spiritually satisfying experiences of my entire natural born life: I swam with dolphins.
Lots and lots of dolphins.
The dolphins, probably three or four dozen over the course of the four hour trip, were friendly and playful and talkative. (Um, and horny. Yes, I saw dolphins doing it today.) There were baby dolphins and middle size dolphins and big, huge dolphins. While I was in the water, the closest a dolphin came to me was maybe three feet away. That's really close. They were graceful, magical. I was mesmerized, and strangely enough, felt like I had been swimming with them my entire life. It felt almost natural.
I was there to begin with as sort of a "working interview," and according to everyone involved, it went swimmingly (heh.) I will meet with Captain Nancy again this week for paperwork purposes, and if we can get all the logistics ironed out, I could very well be doing this on a weekly basis. Captain Nancy owns her own business that takes tourists out on the ocean to, you guessed it, swim among these fascinating creatures. I will be her crewmate on the boat a couple days a week, and be the Executive Office Manager another few days a week.
Although there are places here on the Island that let you swim with dolphins in captivity, these dolphins are wild in the ocean, and are spinner dolphins, which means they catapult out of the water at random intervals and twist and spin in the air before diving back in. Even though they usually do their twisty tricks in sets of two or three, I hear it's not all that common to get a picture like this one, with a dolphin completely out of water:
All in all, a smashing day. Here's to brand new experiences, and the absolutely fabulous surprises life has in store for us sometimes...
Swimming with dolphins! I love my life.
