Dolphins to Skye

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The Dolphins to Skye were the most unexpected and probably one of the biggest stand out moments I’ve ever had in connection with the sea. Other than seeing the barrel jellyfish, I think. Don’t tell the whales and the seals and the puffins but the unexpectedness of this, I think, is what made it really special.

And so, we were getting a ferry over to Skye, and it’s quite a short trip, it’s like 25 minutes. And we suddenly heard quite a lot of commotion on deck. It was a nice, warm summer’s day in July. In fact, it was one of the hottest days, I think, in June. And, we could see all this splashing coming towards us and then realising that we could actually see dolphins flying out of the water. But they were the wrong side of the boat, and you couldn’t actually get onto the ferry that side to be able to take any pictures.

So I was a little bit gutted because there was all sorts of boat stuff in the way, even with a zoom lens on, they weren’t particularly close to them. And then suddenly I looked down and they were riding the bow waves of the boat, the ferry across. And so there must have been about seven of them on our side, just diving and diving and ducking and diving round, and it was just mind blowing to be, I don’t know, five metres above them.

And we were with them for maybe, sort of 5 or 10 minutes of the journey, and then they, they peeled off as we started to reach Armadale. I just, I so wished I’d stay closer because I could not take my eyes off them. And then when we got off the ferry, I’m seeing if I could still see them, because I was hoping maybe we could get to the coast and capture some more moments with them.

But it was just so incredible to be that close to these dolphins. But then that was my first time getting the ferry to Skye. So I was sort of like, oh, is this what getting the ferry is like in Scotland? You just got all of this magical stuff happening around it.

When we later went to the Isle of Barra on the Outer Hebrides, it was a 5 and a half hour ferry. And so I was on deck for literally the whole trip, and I saw dolphins in the distance, but nothing near our boat. And it just made me laugh because I think that first ferry trip, it was almost kind of, beyond, like the, you know, the marketing of how like it could be on the water. And it just absolutely oversold itself to me because I now have this expectation that every time I get a ferry in Scotland, there should be dolphins flanking the boat, and, I don’t know, like a humpback maybe breaching up ahead.

But yeah, I think it just, slightly, trumped any, any kind of future experiences of ferries that we’ve had so far. But you’ve got to be in it to win it. So I will always be on deck if there’s daylight and water, so that I can keep an eye on what is coming in because that moment told me it’s, it’s worth the time on deck to be able to have that moment, with these incredible beings.