This morning the sun was still sleeping behind the clouds but I was still excited for what the day would bring. Yesterday we saw a Mink whale (a cute little mini whale) and caught mackerels and a giant cod. I wondered what else The Rock was hiding.
At the dock we greeted some of the fishermen coming in from an early run. They asked me, “Dija take yer sick pills today?”
“Um no… I’m not sick”
“Hum ya, well yer gonna be!!”
Apparently the winds had picked up and the ocean was getting pretty rough. We couldn’t risk going back to our honey hole from yesterday and changed the plan to hit Sop’s Arm’s Bay. (I guess that means we are going to fish in Sop’s armpit).
On they way there the water wasn’t so bad. I was watching the forest along the coast and saw a bald eagle flying to its nest. I wonder why they call them bald, when clearly they have feathers on their head. Are there long haired eagles? Afro eagles? Buzz cut eagles?
The waves are starting to get bigger. Yesterday they were about a foot to a foot and a half. Now they were about two feet. We pressed on. So did the wind. Waves grew to 3 feet. The boat crashes down off the wave peak and your stomach does a loop-de-loop. We keep going.
Water is splashing over the bow. While our boat is bigger than a dingy, it’s far from an ocean liner. The waves are up to about 4.5 feet and we are starting to really get tossed around. I’m not even sure why we bother with life jackets. If you were to fall in this water you would die from hypothermia before you could get to land.
Now the waves are as tall as I am and look like they’re just going to get bigger. I feel like Captain Dan on the Bubba Gump Shrimp boat. I want to grab onto the bowline and sit at the front of the boat screaming into the 7 foot waves.
Giant cods would jump into our boat. We would weather the storm and come back with a boat filled with a mound of fish.
The other two, not so much.
So we turn back.
Now I know why we are not catching anything. On the way back we see one fin in the water, then two fins, then three. Dolphins start jumping out of the water along side of us. They jump to the right, then swim under the boat and pop up on the left. There are 7 or 8 of them swimming with us back to shore. I don’t even care that they are eating all the fish.
It’s a great day to be on The Rock.