Rotary lucked out. Planning a fundraising cruise in October is an iffy thing when you consider the weather. Rotary’s cruise on Saturday had interesting weather in that it was sunny with fog beginning to settle in. You looked one way and it was brilliant and the other misty. The seas looked calm enough but there was a strong low swell coming in and it was a rough ride when going out to look for whales. Some kids on the ship had a wonderful time screaming each time the ship lurched or swayed.
But it was worth it. In the swells we found a lot of whales blowing, sounding and feeding. There were whales on all sides of the ship so people could line along the rails and enjoy a view without much getting in each other’s way. But it was unsteady enough underfoot that I think the aluminum railing on the upper deck has the imprint of my left thumb as I held on while trying to steady the camera with my right hand.
I was able to get several sequences of shots of whales sounding, my camera clicking away while I held on for dear life. Here are two of them.
After rocking with the whales, we took a sheltered run through the islands to Krestof Sound and back through Olga Strait to Sitka.
On the way we saw some rafts of sea otters and several fresh landslides following the heavy rain. I have a picture of a slide on the next page, which concentrates on scenery rather than animals. Here are some sea otters.
With a slight detour on our run back to Sitka we saw some Stellar sea lions hauled up on buoy #5.
On the next page of this blog I have some pictures of the scenery of the day, which was outstanding.
