Camaret, The Mad Dolphin, and the Azores high.

Jigsaw
Thu 26 Jul 2007 09:32
It is Thursday 25th July and we are still in Camaret, yesterday was wet and miserable, a bit like Ramsgate in February, (but with oysters) with little to cheer us all up. However last night at about 9pm a large Dolphin appeared in the marina. The creature stayed for at least 30 minutes, playing with the boats and putting on a show for the 20 or so boaties and their children who gathered to watch his antics. He was swimming around the pontoons, about one metre from where the kids were standing, standing up on his tail, like Flipper, and generally bouncing around enjoying the attention that he was getting from the multitudes on the dock. It was genuinely amazing to see such a creature so close up, and in such domestic surroundings, the equivalent would be to see an Antilope wandering up Leyton High Road.We managed  to get some clear video footage of him, which we will try to post on the Sailblog site.  
 
This morning on checking the various weather sites on the net that I visit each day we find that the Azores high seems to be building at last, this means that the weather is forecast to improve dramatically over the next few days, enabling us to set off on the next leg of our trip. Camaret is lovely, but we are ready to leave and the weather window looks large enough to make it over to Spain by about Tuesday, if we leave here on Saturday. If we were to stay in Camaret any longer my great aunts would start turning up for their summer holidays, (bringing numerous cans of Makeson Milk Stout and large bottles of lavender water) and the French poll tax lads would be after us as permanent residents. 
 
Currently blowing a  bit outside the boat and forecast to do so all day, we are going to start getting the boat ready for the trip across the bay, tidying up and getting the debris of the last week stowed. The boat quickly turns into a caravan when we are in harbour for more than 24 hours, fishing rods, wet suits and snorkels appear in the cockpit, the lifelines fill with washing and the chart table turns into an office. Turning it back into an "ocean going ship" takes a while and is part of the psychological process of us getting ready to depart from land for a few days.