All at Sea

21/03/2016

Safely ensconced aboard the boat with our bikes vigorously strapped down by a spotty young deck hand enthused with the over zealousness of youth, we settled into our executive outside 4 berth cabin (the only one available with our last moment booking change) to find we would not have to pay the outlandish €4/ hour to connect to the internet as the cabin came with free atrocious WIFI, we are determined to recoup as much of the excessive change of booking fee we incurred. Totally exhausted I collapsed on the bunk with what I noticed was adorned with the latest in prison mattress fashion, while Cameron read the entertainment timetable for the journey and we settled on a talk  from the whale watchers charity Orcaweb.org.uk, at 3pm the following day. With that I had just enough energy to pull of my boots Kevlar jeans and recently acquired second hand Belstaff Courdura jacket the only style available for under £150, and fell fast asleep.

I was up early the next morning, unrevived to the fresh flood of youth by my sleep, I had been disturbed all night by the over enthusiastic spooning ritual my spine’s disc had engaged in, with my spinal column and my legs now twitched and writhed with cramp. I tried to rise quietly at the unearthly hour of 6:30am without disturbing my son. Kneading the knurled and knotted muscles trying to straighten my legs, which eventually paid dividends. With excellent washing facilities en-suite, I turned the shower room into a Chinese laundry, and was surprised by the sediment in the water. I put it down to leaching colour from new socks, as I could not possibly be so dirty at this stage of our journey.

I scrubbed away at the socks, intrigued by the orangey brown sentimental ring, deposited by the murky water lapping around the rim of the hand basin. It triggered thoughts about the nomadic Naledi, a fugitive band of creatures that survived outside the strictures that human society would impose on them, if they were recaptured. Their biggest deprivation was not the scarcity of food but water, so precious that it would be used repeatedly for basic hygiene, cooking, and drinking. I looked into the bowl and wondered what it might feel like if that was the only liquid I had to quench my thirst. I started to think which of my five characters would have the chore of washing the socks, while they were away on an adventure. Otii certainly, the diminutive Naledi with a natural capacity to care for others, and over her shoulder Sienne’s mildly scornful human face would likely comment. “I don’t know why you do it Otii, the boys are quite capable of getting their hands wet. It’s only that they expect it of course. Mind you, Titus might not be, I could imagine his mother would probably still wash his face and hands for him”. They would giggle, Otii would justify what she did, born out of the natural deference to humans. “Most like they would.” Said in her unhurried rolling accent, lengthening the vowels in – would. “But most like it’d be a lousy job, and we would still have to sleep with the smell.” Doing the same with the vowels in – smell. They would laugh as Sienne helps her friend, by ringing out the socks.

Time idled away as we were still in the English Channel following a night’s rough weather and then for several hours docked at Roscoff for a crew change. I noticed our enthusiastic deck hand disembarking with a heavily laden case, no doubt counterfeit copies of Joe Wicks work out DVD’s, though Cameron was of the opinion it was the guy’s work out bench the way he strapped our bikes down, Gallicially ignoring our protestations. We ate and waited for the highlight of the entertainment schedule, the whale presentation and whale watching which should be at its best shortly after leaving Roscoff and entering the Bay of Biscay. I was pleased to start this journey with such an interesting natural science story, other regular travellers having availed us of experiences seeing schools of Dolphin playing with the bow waves, so we were quite looking forward to it.

At 3pm we sat waiting for the talk with a shaven headed English chap on his way back home to Spain, I said hello and asked him if he here to listen to the talk on whales he answered with a swarthy tone of indignation “Apparently so.” Then promptly got up to go outside and smoke the roll up he had just made, no doubt to look for dolphins I thought. Presentation on whale watching commenced with an introduction to orcaweb.org.uk and an explanation as to how they used the ferries during the summer to monitor the whales and dolphins which they had been doing for nearly twenty years, on this trip the whole team was assembled since it was the beginning of the season and were in training and I thought it interesting to note that all but one were female. As a presentation moved into multi-coloured graphics about their preferred feeding locations, I must candidly say the mental exhaustion, lack of sleep and the reminiscences of afternoon college lectures caused me to fall into a deep, spoon free, sleep.

I was woken by my son at the end of the presentation in time for the opportunity to go on decks and view the promised shoals of frolicking dolphins alongside the boat. Our initial experience was a little less exciting, as we cast our eyes across the miles of open, empty ocean. After half an hours total absence of any form of marine life one wave looked like another and it became difficult to tell them apart. I got into a conversation with Yolanda a young Orcaweb volunteer, who freshly out of college had landed this wonderful opportunity to engage with the wildlife of our planet. This was her very first trip with the exception of a week’s training, alongside the ships entertainment team, which started at the dockside with television crews reporting on the cancellation of some sailings due to the force eleven gales. Orcaweb volunteers however are made of stern stuff so with sick bags in hand she had commenced training with the entertainment team and my imagination went overboard about the type of entertainment that would be laid on in such a gale. It would certainly be activities requiring only the use of one hand, leaving the other armed for the fast action use in distributing sick bags which would no doubt come with a hefty price, unless you booked a premium cabin as we had done. I was snapped out of this daydream by a sudden Tiggeresque squeak from the young girl “Dolphins, I see dolphins!” I clumsily fumbled down for my camera, finding the on switch and removing the lens cap swinging round into action I got a wonderful shot of… the waves. “They’ve gone, that was quick.” Commented another Orcaweb volunteer. They’re telling me, I thought, examining the expanded picture of waves, in case it could be argued some dark pixel was the disappearing fin of these elegant, if invisible water mammals.