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We managed to get away around 7.30 am, had another big day of travel ahead to Ribbon Reef #5 and so we wanted to get there as early as possible so we could navigate our way through the coral bommies and anchor in the shallows.

After a very comfortable trip, we dropped the anchor around 3pm and wasted no time in going for an afternoon snorkel with Mahnie and Dylan while the rest went off spearing.

The water was still crystal clear with clean white patches of sand in between coral bommies.  There was plenty of fish life to see and lots of varieties of hard and soft coral.  As well as all the tropical fish life, a couple of large tuna cruised by and checked us out, most likely coming in from the outer edge of the reef looking for a meal.

We stayed in the water for a very long time, but daylight was fading on us and so we thought it best to get our tasty little bodies out of the water and back on the safety of the boats.

The day came to an end with sundowners on the back of Tic Tac and planning what we would do the following day.

The weather was so pleasant that Brett and I slept on the back deck under the stars.  We awoke to find two other game boats had joined us for the night.  It was still Marlin season and so there were plenty of keen punters around hoping to hook up and tag one of the sea giants.

The next morning we awoke to find blue skies and calm seas.  We started the day with an early morning swim.  We took the tender a few hundred metres away, closer to the outer reef. I was content to snorkel nearby the tender with Toby while the others went on another hunting exercise.

After a couple of hours and moving around to a few different spots we were thinking about going back for lunch.  Suddenly the tender was surrounded by a huge pod of dolphins, maybe 30 or more.  It seemed to be a large family with a few young ones amongst them. They were playing around, jumping out and doing mid air acrobatics.  Toby and Dylan jumped in the water with them and came face to face with 6-7feet long Bottlenose Dolphins.

We then started racing around in the tender with them. The faster the tender went the more excited the dolphins got trying to surf the bow waves and covering us with water from their blowholes when they broke the surface.  A few of them would ride the waves, drop under the tender and then leap into the air behind us doing somersaults.  Mahnie and I reached out from the tender as they were racing beside us and tried to touch them.  Mahnie was managed to and said they felt firm and slimey.

This went on for over an hour and it was us that eventually ran out of energy, not the dolphins.  What an amazing experience it was for all of us.  I tried to capture it on film but the photos didn’t portray the feeling of excitement in the air from both the dolphins and us.  How lucky we were to be in that particular spot at that particular time and for the dolphins to interact with us in such a way.(see video)

We couldn’t stop talking about it over lunch and for a long while afterwards we could still see the pod lingering nearby, maybe waiting for us to join them in another session of play.

The hunters went back out after lunch to do some more spearing and Mahnie and I chose to laze around the deck reading and relaxing.  We had sundowners once again on Tic Tac and then retired for another early night.  Tomorrow would bring another leg in the slow journey south.