Status: RUNNING
We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik on a beautiful and sunny day. Wind is coming from the South and is 4-6m/s.
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: The waters were still a little rocky from the westerlies the last day but most survived it well by taken a sea sickness tablet and staying outside for most the journey. We found a very good area with many gannets plunging into the water. We were patient and soon Minke whales started to show up. We must have seen at least 5-6 individuals through the tour in this area but they were fast, heading this way and that way. Definitely very hard to keep track of them but the passengers did well and helped me spot a lot of the surfaces. The ride home was smoother but the wind was stonger and colder. Everybody came in for a whale punch (hot chocolate and rum). Brrrrrr!
- Megan Whittaker
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The swell was still pretty high this afternoon and the cold wind started to pick up under an overcast sky, all the requirement for an authentic Icelandic experience. It took us a bit of time before our first encounter with a cetacean in the bay but we eventually crossed the path of a minke whale. Unfortunately the animal was pretty elusive and I don't think anyone but me saw it. We stayed a bit, hoping that the whale would come up again at the surface, but after a while we resumed our journey further out. We then encountered another minke whale which was way more reliable, surfacing more often, following a straight direction. After a while though it started getting faster and changing direction often, which was pretty confusing. But we soon realized the source of the confusion was that we were now looking at two minke whales instead of one...
-Rémi Bigonneau
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: On this beautiful morning we sailed out in hopes to find cetaceans again and were expecting rather nice sea conditions. However, even though there were not many waves around, there was a high swell out in the Bay today making it hard for some people to keep their breakfast inside. Otherwise it was a very nice tour, with a total of 8 minke whales! It took more than an hour to find the first one that just popped up 50 m away from us. As we were waiting for it to come up again, we saw another one in some distance and headed over there. This minke whale turned out to be actually two individuals traveling together! Very exciting for us since this is quite rare for this small whale species! We waited a few minutes again and suddenly they came up just 30-40 m away from us, so cool! After that we saw one more minke whale, and another four on our way back to the harbour! Let´s hope they will stay for a while! Not to forget the few harbour porpoises we saw just 15 min after leaving the harbour.
- Hanna Michel
Bird species seen on today's tours include: eider duck, common guillemot, northern gannet, northern fulmar, Manx shearwater, sooty shearwater, arctic skua,black-legged kittywake, black-headed gull, greater black-backed gull and lesser black-backed gull.
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