Saturday, 11 October 2014

Tour at  13:00

Report from Elding: Our second tour of today also went out from Grindavík where we found shelter behind the land when we were close to coast but we noticed the strong wind when we reached the unprotected part of the North Atlantic Ocean. At the beginning we enjoyed the blue sky and sunshine but then thin clouds came up and covered the sun in a veil. After a short while we noticed the splashes of a pod of Harbour Porpoises milling around and swimming very fast provoking the splashes when they emerged. After several short sightings of this small cetaceans which were quite close we continued further on were we met from time to time seabirds like the majestic northern gannets and two more times Harbour Porpoises, so in total it came up to almost ten individuals. We hoped to find bigger cetaceans to have a better look at but as they were not showing up we handed out complimentary tickets to give everybody the chance for another try. But just the sailing with view at the lighthouses, cliffs and rocks made a good background for the music video clip which was shot on board.

- Carine Zimmermann

Tour at  09:00

Report from Elding: Today we started our tour in Grindavík because of the adverse sea conditions in Faxaflói Bay. Even though there was quite some wind at times the sea was surprisingly calm on the other side of the Reykjanes Peninsula. And so we sailed out into a beautiful sunny morning while enjoying the views of the South Coast which we followed for the first part of the tour. Eventually we discovered some birds and headed a bit further offshore to take a closer look. And sure enough we soon saw splashes underneath the birds - a pod of harbour porpoises! At first they were a bit difficult to spot but then the whole pod (at least 8-12 individuals) surfaced very close to our boat as they passed by in front of us. As we sailed on we found at least 3 or 4 more pods - all of them very friendly for porpoises! At times we were almost surrounded by them as they splashed and raced through the waves. In total we must have seen 30-40 porpoises on this tour. Unfortunately though, we did not manage to find any larger whales and therefore offered our passengers complimentary tickets. Hopefully they will be able to come along for another whale watch and get to see some of the other species we are sometimes lucky enough to see!

- Linda