SATURDAY, 27 MAY 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Elding: Half of the sky was covered in clouds when we left, but the sun was right behind them, ready to emerge at anytime. After a quiet sailing to the main whale area, we noticed splashes far away, 2 kilometers away. The animal responsible of this tremor seemed quite big, but we will never know if it was a leaping dolphin or a breaching minke whale, as we decided to not mover over there because minke whales were spotted in our area. Indeed, we found 2 sleeping minke whales. These individuals were hardly moving, surfacing very slowly and always in the same direction. This allowed us to take few close looks before we decided to leave them sleeping in peace. After traveling a little bit more, some passengers spotted one white-beaked dolphin. But the animal was elusive and did not let us see it more. It was then time to go back home, so we headed back to Reykjavik, listening to the songs of our 2 awesome musicians. (Special note: Happy Birthday Jeanette, you were a very pleasant passenger and spotter !)

- Guillaume Calcagni

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The sky cleared up again this afternoon with more sunshine for our whole tour. Once again the sailing conditions were really nice too and on the way out our sailing was very smooth. It took us some time to find our first animals though, around an hour of sailing before we saw some huge splashes in the distance. As we got closer we saw that this was a pod of white-beaked dolphins that were leaping high into the air and causing a big splash. This would be our first pod out of 3 pods of dolphins that we could see. The second was the best as it was interacting and bow riding with our boat, a really memorable sight. The third was also leaping high into the air. So all of the dolphins were putting on a show today! We did see several minke whales in a small area but all of them were elusive and it was difficult to see them often, there were numerous times to see them so everyone will have seen at least one whale but they were not as entertaining as the fantastic dolphins!

- Jack Ball

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: The warm winds were picking up when we left for our second tour of the day. We headed to the area where we encountered a group of 3 minke whales on our 10 o‘clock trip. Unfortunately the minke whales we did find were feeling very sneaky. We saw and smelled the blows from the whales but no whale so we headed further into the area in hopes of finding less shy whales. Our search was rewarded with finding two minkes in the same spot, one that was very curious and came in front of the boat many times and another that was feeding further away. On our way back to harbour we also passed by a small pod of at least 2 harbour porpoises that surfaced very close to the boat and then dissapeared. Despite the strong winds we were very warm because the winds were warm and the sun was shining. It was so warm that there was little need for overalls on this trip.

- Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The wind had picked up a bit since the morning tour. A cloudy sky and a dark sea met us when we sailed out. It was really fun to see that so many people wanted to join us on this tour, we sailed out with a full boat! We had sailed for almost one hour when we discovered two minke whales in the same area. The whales were elsusive showing themselves porly to us. Luckily we also found a pod of 4 white-beaked dolphins right infront of us. What a show they put on, swimming under the boat several times and surfacing right next to us! After a while the dolphins swam away and we continued our search. We had two more encounters with minke whales, with the last one surfacing close to us right before we had to start heading back. On our way back a pod of 3 harbour porpoises traveled passed us shortly. A good tour under a cloudy sky.  

- Marcus Bergström

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding:  We headed out with warm winds and the sun shining through the clouds. By the time we got out Hafsúlan had spotted their first animal and so we headed to the same area. There we found a pod of 3 white beaked dolphins that was heading towards Hvalfjörður in a hurry so after following them for some minutes we headed towards a large flock of birds hoping that the minkes would be feeding in the same area as the birds. There we encountered two feeding minke whales,  one of which came really close to our boat before sneaking away in the vake of our boat. We headed back towards harbour but on the way back we struck luck and met two groups of multiple minkes that were buissy traveling somewhere.

Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: Another sunny day in Faxaflói with more great sea conditions meant another nice day of sailing. After searching for around 50 minutes we found our first species, a single white-beaked dolphin. This was being quite elusive and it only appeared a few times, this may have seemed disappointing but this dolphin led us to something bigger. A minke whale! This was a whale we know very well as Aura. At first Aura was being elusive again but after showing patience Aura rewarded us with appearing right next to the boat numerous times and letting everyone get a perfect view of the whale. After some time we moved on as we heard about some better dolphins than the first we found. This was a pod of around 5 individuals and they were loving being around the boat as they were swimming around and in front of us many times, we could even watch them under the water swimming near us! All in all a lovely day of sailing!

- Jack Ball

Birds encountered on today's tours: northern gannets, northern fulmars, common guillemots, black guillemots, puffins, kittiwakes, manx shearwaters, eider- ducks, arctic terns, greater black backed gulls and lesser black backed gulls.