We arrived in Abersoch at 1.30am after watching Bill Bailey (which was very funny) in Warrington at the Parr Hall. We went to bed after a cup of tea and after only 5 hours sleep were in the boatyard waiting to go in the water. We put the dinghy and outboard on the boat and were moved towards the water in the hoist pulled by a tractor, which is always an interesting ride.
It was a big tide, 5m, so was a relatively smooth operation made easy by Nicko and Dave from the boatyard with Tim being chief photographer on our behalf. We were backed into the water, slings taken off and after a few minutes we were off. Much quicker than waiting on the shoreline for the tide to come in…
We soon motored off towards the mooring, it all went very smoothly the boat running well and looking great with it’s new paint job.
Once on the mooring we lowered the dinghy into the water and Chris got in and attached the outboard. He tied a piece of rope to the engine and the dinghy because it’s not uncommon to drop it in the briny! Many people have, whoops. We checked the boat wasn’t taking on water or had any other problems and when Chris was happy with it we locked her up and jumped into the dinghy. We took photos of Modoc on the mooring, we were both feeling very satisfied and happy because she looks fantastic. We could buy her all over again, no, no what am I saying!!!
We were delighted to see the dolphins out getting their breakfast. They were jumping out of the water and rounding up the fish, busy busy. As we headed back to shore in the dinghy they came very close to us following the mackerel.
It’s always a joy to see them and we always feel privileged to see them so often. It also means there are fish about….we are going out fishing when it’s not so windy and I can definitely feel a smoked mackerel pate coming on, yum.
We can now pick out some pictures and advertise the boat for sale on a couple of the online company’s sites which sell boats. We are hoping it sells sometime soon but not immediately as we want to have a final play on her and invite friends for a few last fishing and wildlife trips. We will see how that goes, it has been fun.
We have been surrounded by 50+ dolphins which stayed with us as we motored back to base a few years ago. They were with us for at least 20 minutes. They just rode the bow wave and you would swear that they looked at you, looking at them, as they glided effortlessly around and under the boat. It was awesome, they were in every direction as we motored along. We recorded it on a phone camera and put it on You Tube it was called ‘dolphin encounter abersoch’.
The link is https://youtu.be/UIGbNyUTQhA
We also met a friendly seal who we named Bob because he just bobbed up when we were in a particular spot. He begged for fish, had a fishing hook in his cheek and lots of injuries including a blind eye. I must confess to wanting to go there often so I could see if he was still about and would feed him ALL of the bait fish, it was hard not to….however much Chris objected to me using all the bait he was fishing with!! We doubted whether he would survive the winter and we never saw him again 🙁.
All these encounters I really treasure, the absolute joy of having contact with wildlife especially on the water. May there be many, many more ‘close encounters’.
Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. ~Albert Einstein
Chris and Sigrid’s excellent adventure 