Saturday, March 5th 2011

On Saturday we woke up at our usual 5:30 (There’s no such thing as a weekend on a shark boat) and headed off to set up the boat. We only had one trip that day so all of us were able to go on the morning trip. I went with data again though the sharks were being peevish and many only made one pass at the bait before swimming off again. So we ended up seeing 10 different sharks but I only had good information on 2 or 3 of them. On the others I only had size and time of arrival which does not make for good data. None of us got in the cage that day. Visibility was real low and it was fairly foggy on the water that day. It started off real slow with no sharks arriving but eventually a few showed up and the clients went home happy with what they saw.

After we got back to shore the weather was absolutely beautiful. We all finished cleaning up the boat and wetsuits and then the other girls and I threw on our good bathing suits (aka not the ones we wear everyday and smell like chum) and then laid out on the driveway. The sun was so hot that I was only out for about 30 minutes before I had to come back inside and cool down.

Andy, the other filmographer then came by with the bus and took us on a little afternoon trip. We first drove to the Danger Point Lighthouse. The story behind this is that in the 1800’s a ship called the Birkenhead wrecked on the Birkenhead rock (the rock was later named after the ship) It was going down and the captain made sure that all the women and children got off first. This is where the phrase and the practice come from. Unfortunately, for them most of the people on the boat died from drowning or shark predation.

Unfortunately for us, the lighthouse recently changed its hours; so it’s not open on Saturdays. There was this big gate up, but David managed to scramble through a space in it and I got a picture of him before he climbed back over the fence. We then headed to the Spar (grocery store) up in Gansbaai to grab some extra food and a couple of drinks (cause you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays in South Africa. When we got up there, there was some charity hair spraypainting thing going on. We managed to persuade Dave and Alex to get their hair sprayed. They paid R50 for it. A place next to the super market had soft serve ice cream for real cheap, so we each got one of them. (delicious btw; though the ice cream wasn’t vanilla flavored, it was cream flavored; so it just tasted a bit odd)

Then we headed to a white sandy beach that we can see when we take the boat out everyday. We got there, parked, and stepped out on the beach. The sand was white and beautiful, but unfortunately the sea mist was incredibly thick and there was a surprisingly chilly wind. So we walked up the beach looking for sharks teeth (which you can sometimes find) and then after a while we turned around and walked back. Though inbetween we did find a few interesting things to play with.