Animal activists say they have successfully managed to rescue a lone bottlenose dolphin that fell in love with a sailing ship which it followed into the harbour and then refused to leave.

Sailors on board the ship noticed that they were being followed by the dolphin as they returned to port in the Dutch harbour town of IJmuiden via the North Sea Canal. From here they reportedly journeyed on to Amsterdam.

The SOS dolphin foundation said that the dolphin, which they called Zafar, followed the ship into the harbour which is in the canal that then leads on to Amsterdam, and despite repeated attempts to get it to follow another ship out, it kept returning

SOS dolphin spokesman Annemarie van den Berg said at the time: “This is an exceptional situation, to put it mildly.”

But now it has been revealed that after a weekend spent with the ship they finally managed to get the dolphin back to IJmuiden by towing the sailing ship back to open water where a team from the organisation was waiting to guide the dolphin further out to sea.

She said that Zafar usually lived off the coast near Brittany in France but when the sailing ship passed by he decided to follow it.

She added: “It is a special ship, one of the last sailing cargo ships on earth. So it has no engine. We don’t know why this dolphin is so fond of this ship.”

After the dolphin was guided further out to sea the sailing ship was moved back into the canal and the locks closed to separate the two.

The organisation posted about the problem online saying: “In Amsterdam, our organization tried to lure the dolphin away with another boat, but after fifteen minutes he swam back. It often happens that dolphins follow ships, when those ships leave, they usually then follow them back out to sea. But this ship should only be unloaded on Tuesday (today) and will not leave until some time later. That is too long. The water in the harbour is not salty enough for a dolphin, nor do we know whether there is enough fish for the animal, not to mention the heavy traffic in the harbour. The chance of a collision is high. ”

The captain of the ship had assumed that the bottlenose dolphin would return to sea when they arrived in the harbour, and was surprised when this did not happen. Three days later it was still there and it was decided then to use the same ship that was the object of his affection to lure him back to the open waters.

Van den Berg said the dolphin’s attraction to the ship was a mystery but added: “It is an adult animal that is apparently in good health.”