Friday, March 20, 2020

Tin Can Bay to breakfast with the dolphins

[Kyle]The Admiral tells me that I'm still required to write the blog, even though we all have bigger things to worry about. Fine.

After waiting a week for the weather to calm down enough for us to cross the Wide Bay Bar, we finally left the safety and isolation of Rainbow Beach for Tin Can Bay. We were glad we waited. Even after the big swell from distant Cyclone Harold died down from three and a half meters to two, the bar crossing was way hairier than it was on our departure five months earlier.

A few big commercial fishing boats were headed out at the same time we were going in. They were going into the seas and would periodically disappear in a cloud of spray thrown up by their own bows before emerging from it with their front thirds completely out of the water. We had the waves coming up from behind us, so they hit us less hard and less often. The smooth channel between the breakers was not wide enough for us to pass the outgoing boats at a safe distance. They need deeper water than we do, so we had to try to skirt the line at the side. At one point, I turned thirty degrees to give one of them some room and ended up in the edge of the surf zone. A couple of big waves lifted our stern and threw us forward along the face for a foaming, wild ride. After the traffic passed, I steered back toward the smoother water in the deep channel. The next breaker crashed over our port quarter and slewed us broadside, despite using full starboard rudder. The crest of the wave broke over the boat, doused me and moved everything inside half a meter to the right. We rarely have stuff fall off of the shelves, but it's not never.


Entering the Bar was quit the adventure for us, but worse for those exiting
Things calmed down once we were inside the bar itself

We made it to the smooth water inside the bar feeling disproportionately bedraggled given the short distance we had come. At Tin Can Bay, we set anchor amidst the biggest group of boats we have been in since Sydney. We had come to this particular anchorage because we had missed it on the way south last year and I knew Maryanne really wanted to make sure we didn't make the same mistake northbound. People we know who went last year said the anchorage was so crowded back then that several boats were damaged when they swung into each other, causing several heated arguments. We're glad it was not like that now, but it still took us a while to find a safe spot.

We were hoping that most of the boats in the anchorage were local and thus unattended. We didn't want to be going ashore in any sort of throng. We were a little wary, considering the COVID-19 news of the day. Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, had just closed most businesses and banned any public gatherings of more than ten people.

The thing to do in Tin Can Bay is to go to Barnacles Dolphin Centre to participate in their morning dolphin feeding. We called them and they assured us they were still open. They even kind of hinted that they could really use our business, and asked to arrive by 7am.


Breakfast and feeding the dolphins
Such a pretty location too

So off we went, first thing in the morning to see the dolphins. We were relieved to be the only ones there when we arrived. That didn't last long (everyone else knew to ignore their 'arrive by' time). Right at opening time, about twenty others showed up. Oh, great! The staff was actually very good about explaining the new social distancing rules and making sure we all sanitized our hands while they were watching (for the protection of the dolphins). The guests were a different matter. Since nobody apparently had any symptoms, they all acted like it was the good old days when it didn't exist. As soon as the first dolphin arrived, everybody wanted to crowd together at the rail to see him. We could only back away until we hit the rail ourselves, then we were stuck. This is just great, lots of people coming in from lots of different places to a central spot.

The staff at Barnacles was pretty good about only letting enough of us down into the water at feeding time that we would all be able to stay in our invisible boxes. Apparently, a normal crowd for a day can be HUNDREDS, so we were each given three fish to the usual one.

The dolphins here are an estuarine species that live in the shallow waters of the Great Sandy Strait (Australian Humpback Dolphin). Local Aborigines used to have a relationship with them where the dolphins would get a share of the catch for showing the people where to fish, and helping herd the fish into the locals' nets. Back in the 1950’s when an injured dolphin beached himself on the sand at Barnacles Cafe. The locals took pity on him and started to feed him. Several generations of dolphins and people later, a small subset of the Strait's dolphin population shows up every morning at the beach outside of Barnacles for a carefully rationed breakfast fed to them by human tourists. In payment, they often bring gifts – shells or seaweed or things they found floating down the river. They're on their own for the rest of the day.

Once it was Maryanne's and my turn, we fed our allotment of fish to our female dolphin as her three year-old watched, learning the procedure. She took the food as gently as if she thought it were a balloon that might pop if she grabbed it too hard.

{Maryanne: This was something I'd hoped we'd do on our way south last year, but weather, plans, etc nixed that idea. Our plan B was to visit them for our anniversary on our way north, but then the seas nixed that plan too. Eventually we made it, just a few days after our anniversary, and I was so excited to be able to see the dolphins so up-close. When 'our' dolphin took the fish from my hands she was so amazingly gentle about it. She swims around with her 3 year old 'baby' and apparently does not allow the youngster to feed from us, preferring to keep feeding him with her own milk. The local guides indicated she was quite old as a mother and as long as she was feeding her son, the males won't be pestering her, and they think this is why she is avoiding weaning her youngster - normally by age 3 they are much more independent.}.

Okay, that was pretty cool. Now we had to make our way upstream through a crowd of slobbering tourists to get back to the safety of our dinghy. There seemed to be a lot of elderly in the bunch and they suddenly all seemed to be coughing, clutching fetid hankies to their mouths. Perhaps this wasn't the best idea after all. What's done is done. Gotta go! {Maryanne: Kyle is grossly overstating the facts here for comedic fun, please don't stress on our behalves}

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