Chapter 4: Fellow Adverturers
It's a very small group
The "brochure" says:
This morning after breakfast you will board your boat and over the next five days your skipper and guide will analyse the weather and movements of the sperm whales to get you in the right place at the right time to see these magnificent creatures and if the conditions allow it, swim with them too.
So it is with this gal:
And this one:
And one more:
I shot those with my GoPro.
Day Two on the water again began at the very civilized hour of 8:30. The rule here is that you are allowed to search for and, if possible, swim with the whales for a maximum time limit of six hours, dock to dock. That means we must--to be legal--be back at the Fort Young dock by 2:30. We almost made it. We got back at 5:30.
As you may imagine, there is a story to be told.
There is one other whale watching boat here. Operated by the hotel, it leaves at 8:00. There is a scientific crew working for Project CETI, (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), in a catamaran and they leave earlier than that. So, in essence, we have two scouting parties out on the water who, should they make a contact, will alert us as to where to go.
Intelligence is slow in coming this morning but by noon we have cruised to a point about 6.5 miles off the northwest coast of the island and Patrick calls out, "Get Ready."
My fellow "guests" are Brits Mark Woolley and Tony Herbert. You can see Tony later this month on Netflix in his new move: "Ride." He is my idol as I too would like to have, later in life, become an actor. Both of these guys are great fun. Everybody aboard is great fun. Talia is from Natural World Safaris as Polar and Marine specialist, our organizer, while Brenton, Marcus and Nigel do the hard work. Patrick, well you already know about Patrick. The fact that the group is a small one makes it all so easy. The fact that they are all so personable is simply a stroke of good luck.
We don our gear--simple really, mask + fins + snorkel and sit on the transom at the rear of our boat awaiting the command: "Let's Go." When it comes, we slip--as quietly as possible, off the back of the boat and into the water. Briefly submerging, then surfacing, blowing air through the snorkel to clear it of the salt water than just poured in, you look for Patrick and, like ducklings in a row, kick diligently to stay up with him.
Soon, she appears. I left my camera at home today intending to just take in the sight. I wish I hadn't done that because this calf was waiting on the surface--and slightly below it--for her mother to return from a deep feeding dive. It takes a while for a sperm whale to dive to, say, 1,500 feet, locate a giant squid, catch it, eat it and return to the surface. So what does the daughter do while mom's away? She plays. She's curious. She spots us and she does what any toddler would do. She tries to figure it all out. We don't approach her too closely nor does she approach us. We just take each other in. She twists and rolls. When I first spotted her, she was swimming from left to right upside down, the line of her lower jaw clearly outlined--you can't miss it. Fortunately, Patrick got the shots. Here are two of his wonderful photographs of this moment.
She played some more and then--this is where I wish I had my camera, she assumed a vertical, heads up position, and stayed there motionless. This mimics the sleeping behavior known to be practiced by sperm whales but she wasn't sleeping unless it happened to be the shortest of cat naps. It is difficult to explain the rush we got from being there for all of this. The water is warm, the visibility is excellent, the sun is shining above illuminating our young hostess and the surface of the water, while not calm out here, is not rough. I would say it is breath taking but since breaking through a snorkel in even a light chop is something that one must pay attention to, let's just say it leaves you breathless.
Patrick got the shots that looked into her soul.
She swam away.
Brenton brings our boat back around to pick us up--he is a master at doing that in a way that makes our swim back to the dual ladders on the rear transom easy to access--and we climb aboard. My 75 year old body holds 75 year old feet which are hosts to swim fins. One really can't climb a ladder in fins. I do not possess the upper body strength I once did. We are on the ocean so there are swells that rock the back of the boat as you are attempting to negotiate your re-boarding. Fortunately, the crew discerns the fact that I could use a hand and they always offer me one.
We are back aboard for only a couple of minutes when Patrick says to get ready again. We head back into the water to play with our new girlfriend once again. With no time to rest and recuperate, I am out of gas a bit more quickly than my younger (in their fifties) counterparts and, after a few minutes, raise my hand to summon Brenton. The others are not far behind me.
There is a third trip into the water but I opt out of that one. I know my limits and I choose not to exceed them.
These two days have been wonderful. From arrival on the dock (Tony, Paul, Thalia) to the safety briefing on board to watching Nigel swivel the homemade hydrophone while Patrick listens for clicks to Tony taking a nap during the long dry spells between sightings to high level conversations between myself and Patrick about cameras--you can see his at our feet--the trip is fabulous.
That is until this, our replacement boat after the first one broke down, breaks. It seems to gadget that ties to engine to the driveshaft gives out--much as I did for that final swim earlier. We have two engines but discretion being the better part of valor, we opt to phone home. A replacement boat is sent to fetch us. All of that takes a long time.
We are back at the hotel dock at 5:30. A long day. Thalia asks us what time we would like to meet for dinner. "Half-seven," say my British friends. "I shall opt out tonight," I say. I am a bit too tired to stretch the day any more than I already have. One reason for that can be better understood beginning at the 1:03 mark of this tremendous video Patrick shot. Along with the pilot fish, that's me!
