1st DAY OF THE SEASON
Mood:
happy
Today is the 1st day of Hornblower's 2006 Whale watching season... as the Gray whale migration south to Baja begins.....
I wasn't blessed enough to be out on the water (my 1st cruise is Wednesday); but here is the summary...
written by Elisabeth:
I was fortunate to be out on the first trip of the season with 'Barnacle' Bob, and new Whalers Andrea and Lyn F.
The weather was grey, and there were some terrific swells out on the ocean. But we were excited and raring to go!
Capt. Eric received a tip that a whale was sighted off of Pt. Loma, not too long after we left the bay, so we headed near the kelp beds to take a look around and see if we could find it. I don't know about the rest of the passengers, but that whale startled me, coming up off the starboard side, not too far from the boat. It moved along and right next to the side of the boat (we were facing West at this point), and then crossed behind us, heading South. So we turned and followed behind.
We never did see a fluke. The whale was maybe 25 ft long, and seemed pretty young. But we were very thrilled when the whale did 3 small breaches! A few minutes later, it even did a breach that looked more like a barrel roll. We were beside ourselves with joy over that! But after following the whale a little further, it did 2 more breaches, that were so high, you could see where it's body was narrowing toward the tail! I know a few passengers managed a photo or two. What a terrific show stopper of a whale...we followed it until it was time to head back.
Surprisingly, we didn't see a single dolphin.
But we had stopped by the bait docks on the way out, where one young sea lion was flipping around & then would stop to watch us. I swear it was looking to see what our response was, because it did more tricks every time people shouted with joy.
So it was a day for young marine mammals and some fun stunts!
I think this is going to be a fun season!
Posted by Leslie
at 1:30 PM PST
Updated: Sunday, 12/17/2006 9:00 PM PST
