Sailing on the Solstice

by Meredith Stephens

I promised my Irish guest Orla that if we sailed across Investigator Strait we would see dolphins. Investigator Strait is the passage of water between South Australia and the north coast of Kangaroo Island. My fiancé Alex and I regularly make this crossing in his catamaran to visit his holiday home. We depart from the marina and sail to the mooring in the bay below his house. From there we transfer to the dinghy and head to the shore. I have seen dolphins on every single crossing, but in the back of my mind I worried that this time might be the exception. Orla might battle the cold, the wind, and the unpredictable sea conditions all for nothing. She had come as far away from her native country as possible to study marine biology, leaving her mother and grandmother pining for her. Not only had she come to Australia, she had come to the geographically isolated deep south of Australia. The least I could do was provide a viewing of dolphins, and ideally, kangaroos and possums once we reached the aptly named Kangaroo Island.

 It was the shortest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere, June 21st, but this did not deter us from crossing the strait. The only problem was that we had to leave early enough so that we did not arrive on the shores of Kangaroo Island in darkness. On the previous two winter trips Alex and I had arrived between sunset and moonrise and had to navigate the coastline in the darkness. We had alighted from the vessel into the dinghy with our border collie Haru, and tried to shine our torch on the coastline to no avail. I’m not sure why we thought we could illuminate the coastline with our torch. Once our eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, we were able to identify the shore and safely scramble up the cliffs to our holiday home. This time, we were determined to arrive before nightfall. I tried to push thoughts of drifting back across the strait in the dinghy, Haru in tow, out of my mind.

We were halfway across the strait and we hadn’t seen any dolphins.

“I’ve never done this crossing without seeing dolphins” I repeated, and inwardly I worried. 

“That’ll be just my luck,” replied Orla.

As if they had heard us, we suddenly heard a splash, looked outside, and there they were. We gripped the rails as we walked to the edge of the bow and watched them, swimming in front at the same speed as the boat, breaching as they swam from one side to the other. In the distance we saw yet more splashes, as more dolphins spotted the activity and swam over to us to join in.

“They tend to congregate once we are mid-strait, rather than near land,” I observed to Alex, reminding myself that just because we hadn’t seen many dolphins near the coast we needn’t feel discouraged. The dolphins performed for us for about thirty minutes before disbanding. It was getting cold so we headed back inside the cabin of the catamaran. Not for long though, because there is something exhilarating when you are surveying a stretch of water with so little evidence of human activity. There were no tankers or cruise ships in the distance, nor were there any fishing vessels near the coast. I ventured outside to the bow again and called Haru to follow me. There I sat for the next hour, gazing at Point Marsden in the distance while stroking Haru. If I stopped rubbing her forehead she would nudge me in protest until I resumed. The sun was low in the sky, and I could feel its warmth cascading over my shoulders, Then the dolphins returned.

“Dolphins!” I shouted, worrying that my feeble voice may not carry to those inside. I continued to shout until Alex poked his head out and heard me. He summoned Orla and she ventured out to the bow to enjoy the spectacle of dolphins breaching. By now the sun had appeared from behind the clouds, the waters were clear, and we could see the dolphins when they were swimming beneath the surface.

“I enjoy the crossing as much as I enjoy time on the island,” I told Orla.

Our destination bay was looming so I went inside to fetch the boat hook. I crouched at the edge of the bow while Alex remained at the helm. Once we were closer to the mooring buoy I pointed at it in case it was obscured from Alex’s view. Then I stretched over to hook the buoy, and called out to Alex to help me heave it up. I handed the buoy to Alex and returned the boat hook inside. Sunset was yet to come. We had made it in daylight. Haru was the first to skip into the dinghy. We lowered the luggage and our laptops inside, and then stepped into the centre so that it wouldn’t wobble too much. Alex headed for the small cove we prefer, but the tide was high and the beach was submerged. We headed out of the cove back to the main bay, and dragged the dinghy over the sand before securing it. Again, Haru was the first to alight, and ran into the distance to relieve herself. We carried our luggage up the hill and walked along the kangaroo trail to the house. I could feel Haru’s soft fur grazing my calf as she happily trotted beside me. 

Once at the holiday house we took our luggage inside and hopped into the car to drive Orla into the nearby town of Kingscote, where her friends were waiting for her. It was now dusk, the time when the kangaroos were most active. We drove past farmland and suddenly Orla gasped.

“Kangaroos! They’re big, aren’t they?”

We gazed outside and saw a mob of kangaroos hopping in the distance, startled by the sound of our vehicle.

“I’ll have to drive slowly. I don’t want to hit any native animals,” warned Alex.

Man-made roads made no sense to native animals. They would walk across them as nonchalantly as they walked across open land. We drove slowly, occasionally stopping as confused possums appeared in the headlights. 

Then the moon rose. It was a full-moon, and the moonlight was reflected in the Bay of Shoals on the road to Kingscote. I was relieved that I was able to deliver on my promise to my Irish visitor. We had arrived on the shortest day of the year. We had spent time in the company of pods of dolphins, driven past mobs of kangaroos, and bathed in moonlight beams dancing across the sea.