It came out of nowhere. No sooner had I clicked the ‘publish’ button on my last blog, bemoaning the relentless wind and rain, than a couple of days of calm were forecast. Maybe even with a glimpse of the sun! Maybe even some balmy temperatures that meant I didn’t have to wear two full-length onesies beneath my drysuit! Whaaatt?
The rusted cogs of organisation scrunched into action and Henry…Henry Kirkwood wildlife filmmaker…suggested a rendezvous in South Devon with an ITV film crew duo, Charlotte and Penny. They had been waiting many months for an opportunity such as this to film Henry, the Lone Kayaker and hopefully some dolphins, in action.
This was going to be a tall order. It was, after all, still March so any wind at all would make the whole day feel cold and grey and as hostile as the North Atlantic in…er…March. Also finding dolphins from a kayak is difficult at the best of times and trying to locate them close enough to the shore to be within range of a TV camera is quite a challenge…let alone be with them on the same screenshot. Over half the time they are not in a sociable mood they are gone with the flick of a tail.
However I was sure that Henry and I were going to have a great day out in the open sea in Puffing Pig 2, my inflatable double kayak. The coastal scenery around Torbay is excellent and we were laden down with coffee, sandwiches and naughty-but-nice snacks.
It’s the icing on the cake, the dolphins, that were the potential sticking point. Cakes are great but not so great as when they are covered in icing.
Little did I know the icing was going to be caked on as thick as the Greenland ice cap.
Here we are heading out with the eye of the TV camera on our backs… Nice footage, Becky.
The sea was, as forecast, flat calm. Maybe even flatter than that. We sliced through the velvet surface in convoy with Dave in his single kayak, and were soon loitering off the headland straining our eyes on the lookout for for fins. The swirling waters of the promontory are a focus for fish and a focus for fish eaters. There’s always a few porpoises around if nothing else.
Charlotte and Penny appeared with camera on the cliff edge, and Becky, also on land scanned the sea with with binoculars. If anything broke the surface, someone was going to see it.
But nothing did. There was worryingly little seabird activity…no Gannets within sight and no circling gulls…not a good sign.
Henry and I did a few scenic passes for the camera and after an hour Charlotte called on the two-way radio that they were going to walk back to the harbour to get on a boat to film us from the water.
Her threatened departure seemed to ignite the fuse and the action suddenly kicked off. Dave, who was two hundred yards away, called on the other radio that he had seen a porpoise in front of him. I looked in his direction and caught a glimpse of a dark back and large swept-back fin.
Hold your horses…that’s not a porpoise! But what on earth is it? Not right for a dolphin. Too small for a whale, surely. But it had a whale shape. Pulse starts to race and I blew a few fuses in my synapses.
It surfaces again quite a long way away and…OMG…it sure looks like a small whale!
Absolute chaos ensues…Dave on one radio, Charlotte on the other, Becky ringing on the phone because she has seen the same creature from the clifftop.
It stayed down for several minutes…very typical of a whale…and then surfaced only a few metres from the rocks. Just a glimpse again. But enough for Henry to get a view of long back and dorsal fin…a juvenile Minke Whale.
As it passed us it surfaced only once more and stayed down for a long time before finally surfacing in front of Charlotte and Penny and then disappearing.
A real slinky Minke! Unfortunately we had no chance to take a photo…but what a complete thrill. A whale from a kayak is a special encounter, a whale from a kayak in Devon is even better…because they don’t often venture this far east.
As we were looking for the whale we could hear a squeaky blow of a dolphin behind us. Fortunately it and half-a-dozen mates were still loitering around when the whale ‘action’ had ended.
So we focussed our attention to this little gang of juvenile dolphins and they very obligingly came over to play. As Henry operated various cameras and drones in the front seat I stoked up a head of steam and piled on the paddling to encourage the dolphins to bow-ride. This is not an easy task as Puffing Pig 2 is a beamy kayak and goes best with both paddlers paddling.
Here’s Henry video from the front seat…as close as you can get to these super-energetic and super-engaging creatures without getting in the water with them…
The dolphins were very obliging and even stayed with us as I pointed the kayak towards the lens on the cliff for maximum photogenicity.
It was a really extraordinary ten minutes and what makes watching from a kayak so incredibly exciting. Even better the sea was like a lake and there was virtually no tidal current at all, making the whole experience 100% devoid of ‘conditions concern’.
Thanks for this video as well, Hezzer…
Usually when watching big sea creatures there is a surface chop or swell, tidal current or massive paddle back to the shore to worry about. Not today.
The next two hours continued in the same theme…more dolphins and the briefest view of a porpoise which we first diagnosed by hearing its puff.
Becky, still perched on the cliff, then rang to say she could see a dolphin just cruising slowly along at the surface in the manner of a shark. It had been doing it for five minutes and didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon.
So Henry and I and Dave paddled over to investigate. We were distracted by another small pod so thought the surface-swimming would have stopped by the time we arrived on the scene. It hadn’t.
There was the dolphin cruising along across the velvety surface with just an inch of body and dorsal fin showing. Exactly like a shark, just as Becky had reported.
It seemed perfectly healthy, diving for a few seconds before returning to the surface. I have seen porpoises ‘logging’ at the surface in smooth sea conditions, but never a dolphin. Not for more than a few seconds anyway. Perhaps, like the rest of us, it was simply enjoying the warmth of the sun on its back. For the first time in many months.
It was still going strong when the film crew arrived in their hired boat…Kelly’s Hero skippered by Dave…allowing them to get some more fantastic dolphin footage.
As we were sitting in our kayak relaying our experiences ‘to camera’, Henry in a rather more calm and professional manner than me because my neurones were still fizzing and popping with the whale sighting, another local legend came along in his wildlife-spotting RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat). Rob Hughes of Devon Sea Safari, taking his boat ‘Whistler’ out for a pre-season spin before the season taking customers out kicks off in a couple of days.
Incredibly, he had just been watching the same whale which was now further out to sea and on it’s way south. Better still, he had got some decent photos of the very elusive creature that spent very long periods under the surface.
Thanks for the pics, Rob..
It was an extraordinary day full of memorable ‘firsts’, with surface-swimming dolphins and Henry and Dave’s first UK kayak-seen whale. An entire day of smooth seas and a sniff of warmth and even a glimpse of the sun as well…certainly a first for 2024!
The promised pleasant period of two calm days was reduced to one and-a-half as the next approaching weather front muscled the weather window out of the way earlier than expected. Surprise, surprise.
But I was programmed and ready to go, so had to turf out at 4am the next morning to be on the water at dawn to catch the last few hours of smooth water before the next blow started.
Falmouth bay was my chosen location and it was very much worth the effort of the early start.
I ran into my first pod of dolphins before 7. I glimpsed a line of dark shapes but wrote them off as the wash of the fishing boat that had just surged past. I wasn’t going to be THAT lucky. I had only been paddling for half-an-hour.
Wrong…because a dolphin then leapt right out of the water.
Of course the acrobatic one was a juvenile and the whole pod then came over to say hello:
Over the next five hours I completed a big offshore circuit of Falmouth Bay, visiting the area of the underwater reef known as the ‘Old Wall’ where I encountered another pod of dolphins and heard, but did not see, a porpoise. These dolphins were all adults so behaved in a very much more sensible way than the rowdy youngsters I had just encountered.
In then took a swing around the monster oil tanker moored in the bay.
En route I ran into a feeding frenzy of screaming gulls who were feasting on a baitball of pilchards which were being herded to the surface by another pod of a bout twenty dolphins.
It was quite a melee:
After my slingshot around the tanker I saw a fourth dolphin pod pass in the distance…bringing the total for the day to about 65…probably a lot more than that.
Wow…a seriously action-packed couple of days. I need a Creme Egg.
The Lone Kayaker 
All the excitement is driving me on to get the rowing boat ready ASAP….how amazing to spot that Minke in so close! Well done guys…! 👍
Yes, it’s all about time spent on the water. It was about about as fleeting a view of a whale as it was possible to have, Salvador, but hey…it was a whale! Hope you are well. Very best wishes, Rupert