Fun at sea, it can happen!

On our last sail from Antibes, France to the island of Mallorca, Spain, I wanted to be sure and check a few things off the list. Two things on that list were riding out on the mizzen boom and trying out my homemade gopro mount- the dolphin cam 3000.

To ride out on the mizzen boom, you first prevent the boom out over the side of the boat. Then you run a halyard down through the end of the boom and tie a bosun's chair to the end of the halyard. Once you are in the chair and out over the side, it's all up to your friends to decide how much of a dunking you're going to get as you are sitting in a chair at one end of the halyard, and your crew has control of the other end of the halyard to drop you in the water.  Funny enough, Arwyn had the mind not to go after filming me in the chair.

I made a mount to get down low to the water on the bow to try and get some close-ups of some dolphins. I kept a vigilant look out for them but they weren't showing up in their usual numbers. Typically, we see a few pods on a trip like this. They like to ride the bow wake on boats. What this means is that a boat pushes so much water in front of it that the dolphins can effortlessly glide along on the boat's power.

I was getting pretty bummed when this guy showed up. He didn't stick around too long but it was a success. Look for the white on the sides of the dolphin. When you see white, he is rotating on his side to look at the camera. It turns out he was very interested in the set up and wanted to play. In fact he cooperated so much that around 1:05 on the video, his tail nearly takes out the camera!