English Summer Reflection

I found myself looking at dolphins, leaping majestically out of the water, from the helm of a 425hp monster of a boat.

I have been lucky enough to be able to spend most of my time on holiday in Spain for the past year. This, since my parents own property on the famed Costa Del Sol, translating roughly to "Sunshine Coast", aptly named to attract as many European travellers as is possible. Living there, you get accustomed to experiencing the sea from the vast coastline, walking into the rushing waves as the grains of sand pass through your toes, or conversely, your toes pass through the sand. Most people there have good swimming skills, since this is a practical must with most people owning their own pool and having direct access to the beach. I had been lucky enough to have experienced the sea from another angle, since I had been enrolled in the local sailing club for the past 7 years. Nevertheless, I wanted to cruise on the open blue waters of the Sunshine Coast.

Starting the summer, I had decided to acquire an ICC sailing licence prior to the closure of the season. My parents had bought a pair of study books to prepare me for the licensing test, it included topics such as using a VHF (very high frequency radio), the general sailing dynamics of ships and the protocols to follow when not navigating on the open sea - all incredibly interesting. I believe primordial the drive to be able to sail prior to the end of summer caused me to pull through with this training, and succeed in eventually obtaining my sailing license.

Thus, on the way cruising from Puerto Banús to the port of Cabopino, I found myself revelling in the beauty of aqueous nature, from the smooth comfort of a 25ft, 425hp gentleman's yacht. It was actually my father first spotted the dolphins, as their fins pierced the troughs of the waves. There must have been at least 20 dolphins present, circling the boat as we circled them, as in an endless tango to stay together. Now, reading this, you may think things couldn't get any better but, knowing what I knew about dolphin behaviour around boats, I could discern they wanted to play with us. Consequently, I decided to slowly cruise away and create a large wake for the dolphins to play with. It only took 5 seconds for the dolphins to follow suit, and 10 seconds after that, one of the dolphins decided to so something groundbreaking, or more wave-braking. This particular dolphin decided to put on the biggest show ever, it accelerated upwards like a missile launched from a nuclear submarine and momentarily resembled more of a bird than a marine mammal. It jumped up into the air and, according to my best judgement, reached a height exceeding 6 metres, following a near perfect re-entry into marine orbit, generating the splash equivalent of dropping an ice cube into a perfectly crafted Sangria.

After this, it seemed like we had watched the culmination of me obtaining my sailing license, it was as if the dolphins had planned a surprise party for my attainment of my license, and thus, as always, following a culmination follows a trough, and the dolphins dove into the depths on the Mediterranean sea and I was off to Cabopino, cruising at a speed of 32 kts, only unleashing a bare minimum of the engines powering the motor launch. And there I was, powering over the tops of waves doing 32, knowing I could do 52.