Sails-n-Whales

Day 2, Sunday

Today we were on the water, our friends riding the ferry from Grand Manan to Blacks Harbour and back while Chris and I were on board the Elsie Menota from Newfoundland, seeing whales! Apparently pods of whales circled the ro-ro ferry, too, but we saw them more or less at their own level as they came up for air, spouting on the horizon and close by. With Captain Sarah at the helm and the owner of last night's restaurant, who also runs this enterprise (Whales 'n Sails), on board himself, along with a zoologist from the whale research station making notes in her electronic notebook who could identify the wildlife for us, we sailed for four and a half hours, the length of the island and out into the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. We could see the New Brunswick coast in the distance and could make out the edge of Nova Scotia as well, under the line of cumulus over there. Capt. Sarah observed that there was “a bit of a swell running” after windier conditions last night so that our inclinometer rocked to 10 degrees either side for most of the voyage -- and where we eventually slowed right down and turned around we were in white crested waves that splashed us in the bows -- but during the return to the harbour at North Head the surface calmed down to silky ripples. The sun has shone and the sea has sparkled all day. I wore five layers of clothing on the cruise, by the way, and still got cold hands, except when I got them around a mug of complimentary hot chocolate in the galley below decks.

What did we spot? A prodigious variety of sealife: a school of harbour porpoises, then seals, their heads just out of the water, swimming along like dogs, and further out, a blue-fin tuna. They can grow to 9ft long and weigh 200 lbs. There were a couple of puffins with their coloured beaks, many Manx Sheerwaters, blackback gulls and flocks of Wilson's storm petrels who come to the Bay of Fundy for a rest. They migrate all the way to the Azores and thence to the Canary Isles, the Southern Atlantic and even into Antarctic waters where they venture ashore only to mate and hatch their eggs... before they return to Canada. They are only little and skim the water, flying in “ground effect” the whole way.

As for the whales, we saw fin back whales, humpback whales and several of the rare ones, right whales. I noticed as on the other whale watching cruise we once did (from Riviere du Loup), that when we came close to them, everyone on board was as quiet as in church and the Captain cut the motor so that all we heard was the wash of the waves against the sides of the yacht and the whales breathing. The “bonus” moment, as Chris called it, was one when of the right whales came up right alongside and greeted us with a low mooing or whinnying like a land animal, only much deeper and with more of a vibrato. It's impossible to describe that sound. Then it humped its back and said goodbye to us with its tail.

Chris and I came on shore at 4 o'clock very hungry for our missed lunch, so despite the fact that we have meals booked at the Shorecrest Lodge for this evening he and I have just indulged ourselves with a bowl of seafood chowder for me and a club sandwich with fries for him at Gallaways, the restaurant next to our motel. I am now on the lawn between our bedrooms and the motel's beach, the others around me wondering what I'm typing as they help themselves to the drinks on the picnic table, soaking up the last of the warm sunshine along with the equally relaxing alcohol.