Tour at 20:30
Report from Elding: The weather had not changed much since the previous tour so it felt quite nice on the bay. W had to sail for about 40 minutes before we saw our first animal, a minke whale. This minke was feeding underneath a flock of birds, it was exciting to see it lunge feeding at the surface. This must have been the best sighing of the tour, we all got great looks at it before we set of further out on the bay. It helped a lot to follow the birds as we found most of our minkes on this tour feeding close to flocks of birds. After we had stopped with three minke whales we decided to go further north to search for the humpback from our previous tour. On the way we got a brief sighting of harbour porpoises, that only popped up a few times before they got too far for us to see. A large blow was spotted, we were very patient and waited a long time before it came up again, it turned out to be a humpback whale. We never got great looks at the humpback as it was very elusive. On the way back to land we stopped with two other minke whales.
-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir
Tour at 17:00
Report from Elding: Unlike expected, the wind had calmed down a bit. It remained overcast and with some drizzling rain, but that didn't matter to us thanks to the overalls. Rather quickly we had our first sighting of a minke whale feeding in the area. We could stay with it for a good quarter of an hour until we spotted another blow. We firstly thought it was also a minke whale, but instead it turned out to be a humpback whale. Unfortunately it was being rather elusive, surfacing 2-3 times for short breaths before going under and diving to a different spot. Just as we were about to leave it, a pod of 10 or more white-beaked dolphins showed up! They were playing around with the humpback, obviously bothering it a bit, as it did a tail slap at them and then went for a deeper dive. As if this wasn't already exciting, the white-beaked dolphins stayed with us and were just great! They jumped, came to the bow and interacted with us for over half an hour. They were just such a pleasure to watch!
- Sabrina Voswinkel
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsúlan: The wind had picked up so we got ready for a bumpy ride.We heard of a humpback whale far out on the bay so we decided to travel past the minke whales we spotted on the way out. It was not so easy to get great looks at the humpback as it dove for long time and surfaced few hundred meters away, but we got to see the fluke at least twice. While looking at the humpback we saw huge splashes about a kilometer away, this turned out to be a breaching minke whale! It must have breached at least 10 times before it calmed down. Soon after we spotted 4 white beaked dolphins. They were by far the easiest to photograph on the tour, they came close to us and even swam underneath us a few times, we saw their whole bodies in the water when they were right next to us! They even leaped out of the water a few times making it easy for everyone to follow them around. On the way back we saw the same humpback again and another minke whale breaching at least 3 times!
-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The weather was definitely getting worse during this trip and yet we got quite a few remarkable encounters with the whales - no dolphins this time though! After 30 minutes we encounter the first two cetaceans of the tour in front of us, two minke whales! They were quite close to each other, although traveling in different directions. After that it was a sequence of minkes one after the other one, and we got to see at least 5 individuals up close. This beautiful creatures were probably feeding in the surface, as they seemed careless about our presence. After that it came a little bit more of travel and finally a sleepy humpback whale, that was surfacing really slow and predictable. Luckily we saw the white lower side of the fluke, and almost at the same time a beautiful pod of 4-5 harbour porpoises came riding the waves and decided to give us a good look. A really cute end for a wonderful tour!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsulan: It was a nice morning, it was dry, not too cold there was a bit of wind but not to many waves. It took a bit of time before spotting our first cetaceans. We got a call from an other boat that they had seen a minke whale, so we headed that way. But on the way a pod of white-beaked dolphins crossed our way. What a nice unexpected encounter. It was was pod of about 7-8 dolphins and they where very playfully. There where also some small once with them, We spend some time with them and watched them jumping. Then a minke whale surfaced, two cetaceans in one spot so nice. We continued our way and found two more minke whales they where a bit difficult to follow but we all got to see them. It was a really nice tour.
- Alexandra Bouman
Tour at 9:00
Report from Eldey: The weather today couldn't really make up it's mind. It was dry most of the time and the wind was behind us for most of the tour. We did have occasional rain and sunshine, too. From the beginning on there was a lot of bird life, especially the Atlantic puffin was very numerous today. It was the same for the minke whales! Our first encounter was with four of them, all feeding in the same area, moving all around, sometimes close to the boat, sometimes further away. We watched them for a while until we decided to let them be and look for some more wildlife, maybe even other species. Only a couple minutes later we spotted a pod of probably 8 very nice white-beaked dolphins. Firstly they were very hard to spot, but then they became interested in our boat, coming to the bow and even leaping, which was super exciting. Once we left them, we spotted more minke whales along the way as well as 3 harbour porpoises traveling through the waves. No matter where we looked today, it seemed like every 5 minutes we saw some great wildlife.
-Sabrina Voswinkel
Birds seen today: Atlantic Puffin, Northern fulmar, lesser black-backed Gull, herring Gull, Northern gannet, common guillemot, storm petrel, eider ducks, arctic terns, manx shearwaters.
Status: RUNNING
We are sailing from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. There is some wind coming from the South-East so there could be some movement on the boat out on Faxabay. If you are sensitive to sea sickness we offer seasickness tablets in our ticket office. If have any further questions please contact our ticket office at +354 519 5000 or via e-mail at elding@elding.is.
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