Dolphinmana

January 8th, 2010

First Maui Humpback Whales of 2009!!!

Aloha,

I decided to give myself a break and take a whole weekend off.

What a concept! As I usually work 7 days a week. Building a business and keeping it in gear is a gargantuan task at times, but I love it.

I decided to go on a cruise to the island of Lanaʻi today with the Pacific Whale Foundation to do a dolphin cruise.

Early this morning at 6:30 AM, while driving up in my Miata on the way up the Pali to Lahaina town where the boat harbor is I was doing some Hawaiian Chants and prayers asking Creator for a special treat to see my first whale of the year today.

As an aside, when I first came to Maui I worked on Lanaiʻi as a Child and Family Therapist while I was building my photography business. Today was actually the first time I went to Lanaiʻi in over 5 years and it felt like a pilgrimage of sorts for me. When I was working there, I used to go on the bow of the boat and play ukulele and sing and lift my prayers to Keakua (the Hawaiian word for Creator) that I could have the clarity and strength to do good work with the families and children as the sun rose.

Today to honor that past ritual, I went to the bow of the boat with my favorite new instrument, my African Kalimba, (sometimes called a thumb piano), and played and hummed a simple little song I wrote on it one day after I had a beautiful swim with the dolphins.

As soon as we got out of the Lahaina Harbor we immediately saw a Humpback whale…God/dess is Goooooooood!

The captain called it out on the PA exactly the same time I saw it and he was overjoyed as he shared over the PA system that it was his first whale sighting of the year!

The whale disappeared quite soon after we saw it, revealing its tail as it went under. The captain polled the people on the boat and asked how many of us would like to put off our dolphin cruise to wait 20 minutes or so for the whale to come up for another breath. All hands flew up with a resounding “Letʻs stay and wait!” The vote was obviously unanimous and after 20 minutes almost to the second, the whale surfaced and began swimming right toward our boat…so quickly that the captain put our boat in reverse to keep a proper mandated distance of 100 yards. As the whale swam toward us there was so much excitement and electricity…sheer awe, joy and anticipation about just how close the whale would come to us. It stayed on the surface quite close to us for 10 minutes or so, did some rolling and displaying its huge beautiful body and it almost looked like it gave a wave to us, and then revealed its tail once more as it dove.

We then went out to Lanaʻi and swam for a while in the harbor…but no dolphins came to join us…I was a little disappointed but I turned it around as I had some fun imaging what it would be like to swim like a dolphin and I would up having a great time. (Thatʻs a trick I learned from Mayumi) We had lunch and then went out further into the ocean and within several minutes we saw hundreds of spotted dolphins leaping out of the water and circling the boat. As we moved on the captain hugged closer to the shoreline on Lanaiʻi and we came upon a pod of about 100 Spinner Dolphins doing all kinds of aerial displays which I missed as I was trying to find a clear memory card and load into my camera and everyone was bumping into me with the excitement…one card got bumped out of my hand and almost made it onto a dolphinʻs head but I caught it in mid flight.

The dolphins radiate soooo much joy and had everyone on the boat cheering whooping and celebrating. I was right in the middle of a pod of children and their joy was so radiant that I felt like I was one of them squealing, laughing, shouting and sometimes falling to the floor everytime a dolphin or pod of dolphins did an aerial show that would put the best Chinese Circus or Cirque Du Soleil act to shame.

Iʻm included a few photos to open a window to you and give you a feel of my experience today:

the remnants of my old sailboat that I sailed solo in to Maui thru the Panama Canal from Philly (just kidding;>)