January 25, 2024: I see a lot more dolphins than I’ve seen in one place as I’m leaving my Dad’s house in Fort Pierce, Florida.
On January 25, 2024, I left my Dad’s home in Fort Pierce, FL, to continue my trip northbound on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). My dad lived in a barrier island community with canals that gave homeowners access to the ICW. All the homes had bulkheads or docks or boat lifts — or a combination of any of these — in their backyards. Just about everyone had at least one boat. My Dad used to have a boat, but he’d sold it years ago. His next door neighbor on one side had a boat he was trying to sell and his neighbor on the other side had three boats.
(This would be my last visit with my Dad, although I didn’t know it yet. He passed away in September 2024 at the age of 85.)
As I left his home, I had a GoPro camera running up on the command bridge. I’d had some positive feedback about my videos and although I didn’t shoot much new video in November and December when I had a companion on board, I decided I’d better start shooting video again. You can’t make new videos without new footage. My timing was pretty good because as I eased my way away from Dad’s community at idle forward speed that day, I began seeing dolphins in the canal, just past where the houses are and the mangrove forest begins.
This was my third visit to my Dad’s place and it was the first time I’d seen dolphins there. Normally, when you see dolphins, you just see one or two, although I did once see a lot of them at an anchorage farther up on the ICW — I’ll cover that in another blog post. That day, I saw quite a few all around the boat, culminating with perhaps a dozen of them where the community’s canal makes its turn to the west toward the ICW.
I didn’t know whether I’d captured the dolphins on video until yesterday. I’m finally home and I finally have time to go through the hours of footage I shot in 2024 while I was finishing my Great Loop Cruise. This was the first day of video for 2024 and there were the dolphins!
I have no other video for that day. I didn’t shoot inside the cabin where I was sitting warm and snug out of the cool breeze and I have no live narration. So when I put together this short video yesterday afternoon, I added a brief narration with a talking head shot in my home office.
Anyway, here’s the video. How many dolphins did you spot?
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