Friday, 17 November 2023

Today we will be operating on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00  Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00

Report from Eldey: With the sun still behind the mountains, we sailed out feeling confident we would find our favorite animals today. In fact, covering the area of Videyjarflak, we noticed a very big splash in the distance! We had a humpback whale in the area and getting closer to it we confirmed it was Flak, a whale that has been next to Reykjavik for a week now. Flak breached three more times, making a big splash and surprising us! Then, it calmly went for deeper dives, but not spending too long underwater. A couple of times it popped up extremely close to us, almost as if it was bowriding. Sailing very carefully around it, we stayed a little bit more with this one and then decided to leave to see what else this area had for us today. Getting closer to the mountain of Esja, we saw some birds in the area, which may be a good sign and... there it was! A minke whale in front of us, as our second sighting of the day. We stayed with this individual for a while, whilst watching the skies turn into this beautiful purple and pinkish patterns. We left this one and on the way home we stopped by the area where we saw Flak before, but we couldn't find it again, so we continued our way home to Reykjavik. A great start to our day!

- Pedro Teixeira

Report from Eldey: the weather in the afternoon was even better than in the morning. Extreme calm seas, weak wind, and the sun starting to set since the beggining, creating this beautiful golden hour most of the tour. This tour we decided to do something different: we sailed out to try to find if the whales were in another area. We had amazing views of the mountains and the sunlight on them. After covering many areas, we ended up around Videyjarflak, such as in the morning, where we finally spotted the blow of a humpback whale... our friend Flak! It seemed way calmer during the afternoon, by going for very shallow dives close to the shore of Videy. As we noticed, there were moments that it were not even arching its back at all, staying close to the surface. In fact, Flak was swimming calmly in an area of 2-3 meters deep! Very carefully, we kept our distance from it, giving it all the space that needed to do whatever. Later, Flak moved and had space to do a fluke dive and popped up very close to us, its body shining with the sunlight! When we decided to leave this whale, we looked back and it did a peduncle throw, suddenly! With that, we officially said goodbye to Flak and returned to Reykjavik, enjoying the amazing weather.

- Milla Brandão