Thursday, 22 February 2024

A great day all round, very flat seas but very poor visibility with very heavy snow.

It was extremely tricky to know where we were at any given point during the tour. We sailed up the East coast up to just north of Hjalteyri with no sightings. The water was amazingly flat, however, and the snow and floating ice made from some beautiful scenes. We sailed a little further north when we saw an ice flat with 3 resting seals; a very cool sight. We just started our journey back when we saw some large groups of Harbour Porpoises and out of know where, a diving Humpback Whale. We did not see this whale again, but, the Porpoises stayed around us for quite some time and in the peaceful silence we could hear them breathing. We then continued on further south after waiting for the whale to return at no avail, when, just East of Hjalteyri, another Humpback appeared. This whale was the same individual as yesterday. It dived around us several times and we had one really nice encounter as the whale rose up from the deep just to the side of the boat with many passengers seeing the rising white wings of the whale as it came up to the surface for its first breath.

All round a great tour with challenging sighting conditions yet still plentiful sightings.

Text & Pictures: Mac

Departure: 1300 Classic