McArthur was pleasantly surprised to be accompanied on his little jaunt in Howe Sound by a massive pod of dolphins. Photo: Hydroflyer//Instagram
Howe Sound off the coast of Vancouver is a place that is almost unimaginably beautiful. It’s full of wildlife, surrounded by sky-scraping mountains covered in dense forests, and dotted with little islands. Recently, a man was riding something called a Hydroflyer in Howe Sound when he was joined by a pod of more than 100 Pacific white-sided dolphins.
Jerry McArthur was riding from Porteau Cove Provincial Park with the intention of landing at Horseshoe Bay, a small little village in West Vancouver with a ferry landing that services many Whistler visitors, when the dolphins appeared. McArthur, who happens to be the inventor of the Hydroflyer, was with a friend who was filming for the company. They did not expect what will likely be the best viral marketing scheme they could ever ask for, but it’s likely that the rare occurrence will bring more eyes to Hydroflyer than any old advertisement ever could.
It’s a strange creation. A cross between a PWC and an e-foil, the Hydroflyer is the kind of thing that looks like a blast, but also the kind of thing many surfers would hate to see in a lineup. Propelled by a 7.5 horsepower motor, the thing can hit speeds up 30 miles an hour.
McArthur was expecting there to be waves, since the wind has been howling in the area recently. When he got to Porteau Cove, though, he was sorely disappointed to see flat, calm waters.
“We were pretty disappointed and we thought, ‘Hey, we’ll just go out in the water anyways,'” he told Glacier Media.
Just a few hundred feet from shore, however, things began to look up. “As we were kind of going out, we saw something out in the water,” McArthur explained. “We didn’t really know what it was.”
As it turned out, the friends were foiling directly in the wake of a huge pod of dolphins. It’s never a good idea — as tempting as it may be — to get close to wild animals like dolphins, but dolphins are incredibly curious creatures and didn’t give McArthur much choice.
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“I didn’t want to get too close to them, so we steered away from them to kind of give them a wide berth, but they’re curious, so they came over to check us out,” he told Vancouver Is Awesome. “The next thing I know it’s just dolphins everywhere.”
Since he was recording, he was able to capture stunning video of what he was seeing. “When I looked down, all I could see was dolphins underneath me,” said McArthur. “It was really wild because they were actually turning upside down underneath me so they could stare up at me… I was just like ‘holy crap’ the whole time. I was just blown away.”
The experience lasted about 20 minutes, and it’s likely 20 minutes that he’ll never forget.
