Friday Harbor

Woke up early today to get ready to head out on our whale watching trip. Some people were coming in on the ferry for the excursion, which was delayed due to heavy fog. So the tour was going to start at 11:15am. We got down there and checked in and got our anti-exposure suits. They were padded and definitely warm on this gorgeous day. Made me debate why we were wearing them. We grabbed hats and gloves too as they suggested. We had 10 people of a boat that seats 15, including the captain and a naturalist. We headed out and had quite the ride, going maybe 30+ MPH and over some big waves. The captain was chatting with other boats about where the whales were, and if there were any sightings. While we were waiting, we stopped to see an island full of seals, then a few eagles on Speiden Island. We continued on, and apparently crossed the invisible dotted line that separates the US and Canada ;-) to find the Orcas. We soon caught up with a few other whale watching boats who were all watching this family of Orcas. Apparently they are a transient group, as opposed to the J, K, and L pods who live here. There were at least one or two adults and some youths that just kept hanging out. They would swim around the top, show their dorsal fins, blow their spout, dive under, come back up, dive back in and do it all over again. We moved along watching them for over an hour. They put on quite a show for us. Even the B.C. ferries coming by didn’t phase them. We took a ton of pictures, and luckily after getting them downloaded and zoomed in, Heather got some nice shots. Including one of the tail of one as it dove down in front of a sailboat. Lucky shot. We actually ended up very close to the town of Ganges on Salt Spring Island, in Canada. Heather actually visited there 5 years ago with us when she came up to the boat and we went around the Gulf Islands. After we’d been out over an hour, we had to head back. We actually went quite the distance to get to the whales, so had to high tail it back. And FYI, the distance we traveled one way today in about 30-45min (at 30ish MPH) would take about 4-5 hours (at 6 knots) on Aquila. And let’s just say that I understand now why we wore the suits that we did. It was freezing out there. We went back to the boat and made some grilled cheese sandwiches for a late lunch before going back into town. We went to The Whale Museum and wandered around. It was small but nice. On the way back to the boat we stopped at the fresh seafood place on the dock and bought a pound of tiger prawns for dinner. I made a ginger, teriyaki, honey, coconut marinade for the prawns (I stumbled upon a recipe in one of my cookbooks and faked it from there) over some jasmine rice. We decided to anchor out the next 2 nights in more rural areas where maybe we can hike and kayak.