Whale Watching!

My husband is a Santa Cruz native.  I'm a transplant to Santa Cruz, but was born and raised in California.  As a married couple of almost 20 years, we have lived close to the beach.  We have spent many summers on the sand while raising two boys.  Growing up, I would go to the harbor every Sunday with my dad and his best friend and take the sailing boat out onto the bay.  We love the water, the sand, and the sea life!  But, we have n e v e r taken a whale watching boat tour before... until this past Sunday.

We had been hearing about the Orcas in the bay surrounding and killing a gray whale calf.  We know it's the season for humpbacks, blues, and gray whales.  So we said, let's do it!  Thanks to Groupon, I had our Sunday morning tour booked within minutes.

We boarded the Sea Goddess vessel at 0930 hours.  As we maneuvered through the harbor, the Captain said he could already see a "blow" right outside of the mouth of the harbor!  All I could think was, YAY!!!  And he was right!  We were maybe a football field length outside of the harbor when there were humpback whales to the port side of the ship. We were on the starboard side, so we waited and were patient.  We saw a white-ish nose of a whale pop up - full of barnacles - and then lost him.  That was our first spotting on our side of the ship.  We later found out that was the only gray whale of the day.  Bonus!  The rest were humpbacks.  We eventually got to see some humpbacks on our side of the ship.  So fun!  We could call the trip a success and go back in the first 30 minutes.  Buuuut... it was a two-hour tour.  So the captain continued on.  We stopped at the 1-mile buoy to watch more humpbacks and their calves.  So fun.  Then we made it out to about 2-3 miles.  It got quiet on the water for a little bit, so we eventually made our way back to the 1-mile buoy where we saw more, or the same ones but we saw them again. :)

The captain put the engine in gear and was just starting to go when, right in front of us, a humpback whale breached! Almost clearing the water with his/her entire body!  And for whatever reason, I was the only one of the boat who captured the breach on camera.  And there were about 50 people who had cameras up and in hand the entire tour! Crazy!