| |
Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Re: Whale Watching....
Posted By: Jack In Response To: Whale Watching.... (Pete W. P.)
Date: Friday, 22 October 1999, at 2:44 p.m.
I've been on several Whale watching trips off of cape cod on comercial boats. While the 12 miles out and 12 miles back is an daunting chalange the bigger issues is that whales are a moving target that can be difficult to find in a low speed boat like a kayak. By the time you get to where you want to go a pod of whales could be 5 miles in another direction.
The best place I've seen for spotting a whale from a kayak are in the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound. There are many Orca pods that live and feed around the islands. There are lots of sightings right from shore and a network of spotters that can tell you where they are on a given day so that you might be able to launch and get a reasonably close up view.
I spent 10 days vacation in the area this summer and learned the problem of going after a moving target. We signed on with a comercial whale watching outfit with a 30ft boat that takes 8-10 people out at a time. On the particular day we were to go out all of the Orcas decided to swim north (at 40 mph) towards Vancouver. Initially we were religated to a nature cruse. The captain was quite proud of how fast his boat was. Another Captain on the radio started egging him on and making disparaging remarks about how slow our guys boat was. The guy felt his manhood was being chalanged and drove his boat at full throtle for almost 2-1/2 hours north untill we caught up with 50 orca whales feeding at the mouth of the Frazer river north of Vancouver. It was quite a sight having killer whales all around you but we could only stay for 10 minutes as our 3 hour whale watch had turned into a 5 hour epic.
Regards,
Jack
> Hi folks!
> I read that Whales [humpback] can be seen 12 miles off cape cod. That
> makes an "Out and Back" trip of 24 miles. I've never done
> anything remotely like that as my "yaking" has been sparse and
> borrowed at best [TILL I GET MY EXP> SINGLE BUILT!!!] At anyrate, does
> anyone know of people whove done that kind of distance - without having a
> body that looks like an anatomy lesson? Whales are my deep deep deep
> passion - when I get my web site up I'll put out the address for anyones
> whoise interested in my marine oil paintings. At anyrate, 12 miles, in one
> breath seems so close, till you have to think about going back! Is that
> too far out for the averege guy??> Many thanks folks!
> Pete PS: Just bought me a DELTA bandsaw!!!!
| |
Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board is maintained by Nick Schade - Guillemot Kayaks with WebBBS 5.12.
|
Kayak Trips |
|
|
|