Dolphins off Baja

Dolphins this morning. A whole pod of them.

I was on the bow at sunrise, which I am now allowed to visit under certain conditions, those conditions being Tiny. He had told me last night that if I was up early enough, and if the sea was right, I might see something. The sea was right. I was up early enough. He was there already, leaning on the rail with a mug of tea, looking at the water like a man who had arranged it.

The sun came up behind the mountains of Baja, all brown and gold and bare, with the sea in front of them flat and glittering. And then, without any warning, there were dolphins everywhere. A dozen at least, maybe twenty, leaping beside the hull, racing the bow wave, slipping under it and bursting out again on the other side, as if the ship were a toy that had been put there for them.

I have seen dolphins before, from beaches, from ferries. I have never seen them like this, from directly above, close enough to hear them breathe.

Tiny did not say anything for a long time. Then he said, "Every time." And that was all.

Warm

It is properly warm again. We are heading south down the Mexican coast and every day the air will get warmer and the sea will get bluer. At breakfast Elena mentioned, casually, that if the sea temperature kept rising, the crew pool might be filled again soon.

I have been thinking about the crew pool since the Mediterranean. I said, perhaps a little too quickly, that I would be very happy to help fill it. Elena said nobody helps fill the pool. The pool is filled. I accepted this.

Sunday

It is a quiet day. The ship always has a quiet day after a port, as if it needs time to settle its new boxes and its stomach. People sleep. People call home, on the Starlink, which I am still pretending not to depend on. People do their laundry in the operating theatre.

I spent the morning writing up the last few days, which you have now read, and the afternoon on the bridge wing with the biscuit tin.

The tin

The tin is lighter than it was on Friday. I would like to note this.

On Friday I returned from Santa Monica with a carrier bag full of digestives, shortbread, ginger nuts, and tea. Since then the tin has been visited, by its brass knob, a number of times, and not all of those visits have been mine.

Priya came out at the end of her watch, and sat on the ledge beside me where Container likes to sit, and opened the tin by the knob, and took a ginger nut.

"Those are emergency biscuits," I said.

"This is an emergency."

"What is the emergency?"

She thought about it. "It is Sunday," she said. And then, "I am collecting. You still owe me four."

"I think you have collected considerably more than four."

"Interest," she said, and ate the biscuit, and looked at the mountains, and so did I.

Where we are

For those keeping track at home, and I know some of you are, because you keep telling me I am in the wrong ocean: we are off the Pacific coast of Baja California, heading south and east towards Central America and the Panama Canal. Somewhere ahead is a canal I have wanted to see my whole life, and somewhere beyond that is the Caribbean, and beyond that is a coast I know very well.

I find that I am not thinking about that coast much. I am thinking about the canal. And the pool. And how many digestives there will be by Wednesday.

Container is asleep on my bunk as I write, on top of the rose from last night, which she has removed from its mug and claimed. Her face is on my pillow. Mine will be beside it shortly. I have stopped pretending that this is not how I like it.