August 10, 2010 Tuesday, Menke whales

Today is my sister Robin's b'day. Today's plan is to head out through Mosquito Pass, into Haro Strait, and around into the Strait of Juan De Fuca. To see if we can find me some whales to look at, from our own boat. They like to hang around out off shore at Lime Kiln Park, There sure were a bunch of people hanging out on shore there. The water was pretty flat, which means little or no wind, and the tide was going with us, so we tacked out to sea to get some headway. Before we knew it we were almost to Canada, so we tacked back towards the San Juan Channel. We seen a couple of porpoises and seals, no whales, I'm beginning to think its just a ploy to get people to come up here... We were almost to Cattle Point, when we noticed 3 Whale Watcher boats come out of the San Juan Channel. They stopped, so we decided to go check out what we could see. They were all in a row and turned back towards us. We were almost there when I saw my first whale. It was a Minke whale. There was a couple of them. It appeared they were feeding. One came fairly close to us. We had the best seat in the sea. Ha ha. They would come up for air like 3 times, then dive for a few minutes. One of the boats came over by us, and the Minkes came up right where they were. I finally got to see some whales. Minkes are almost as big as Orcas, but they have a small dorsal in over half the way down their back. We were the last to leave and head to shore. The current was ripping through Cattle Pass.

Our hull speed is 7 knots, and we were going 10 knots at one point. It was like riding the rapids. After we made it through we saw a huge sea lion. That sucka was huge!!! He was almost as big as Simplicity, and shes 28ft, tip to tip. We decided to head to Friday Harbor, and see what was going on there. We anchored out, and took zipper in. The kids really like to go for a ride in zipper to go potty, and they get so many comments on their cute life vests. We got to do a bunch of anchor tests this time. This big green eye-sore has a magnetic pull. Every time you drop the anchor, it pulls you right towards it. We reset the anchor 4 times. aaarrg.   bunkmate