Dolphins Galore!

Saturday August 15^th –  Today we are headed back south to Dent Island Lodge.  We’ve never been to this luxury fishing resort that’s extremely expensive, but everyone says you have to experience at least once.  This resort is owned by the Nordstrom Family and has a beautiful setting right in the middle of Dent and Yuculta rapids.

Once again we had to hit slack water at Dent rapids.  We are the slow boat so we took off first from Blind Channel headed for the rapids.  Smooth motoring through the rapids then we tied up on the nice docks at Dent Resort (14.44nm) right in front of the Boeing Co. corporate boat (pretty much a ship actually, it’s a 150’ Delta Marine named “Daedalus”).  We could have easily been their dinghy!

We all went up and had a wonderful lunch at the restaurant.  Ava and Brianna explored all the grounds by themselves and found the resident resort dog named CC.  They were in love playing with the dog all afternoon.

Todd, Keith all the kids and myself decided to take Todd’s 17’ dinghy out fishing.  Surrounded by rapids we didn’t feel comfortable going very far but got close to Aaron rapids while it was in full swing.  The water was running incredibly fast as we poked the boat into the flowing water just to test its strength.  Just as we pulled away we could see a couple Pacific White Sided Dolphins playing in the surf.  We all got excited and headed that direction to get a closer look.  As we got closer our boat was surrounded by them!  At least 50-100 dolphins all playing around our boat.  They were in our bow wake and leaping in the air all around us.  At one point I reached out and got within a couple inches of touching one.  Todd was snapping photos of some in the distance and at the very moment he hit the button one just happened to leap up out of the water right next to the boat.  We motored back to the dock with no fish but one of the coolest (accidental) photos ever!!

All 12 of us had a fantastic dinner in the lodge that night!

Trip Log – 336.15nm