Tour at 20:30
Report from Hafsùlan : We sailed out from Reykjavik older harbor in beautiful sea and weather conditions, cloudy but no wind so it felt really warm. We first stopped at Puffin Island on the way out, there we got to see a lot of our favorite birds. It didn't take a long time before we saw our first Minke Whale ! We watched it for a while and not even 2 minutes after we left this Minke we already spotted another one and it kept going like this throughout the tour in the way we had great sightings of over 7 Minkes. The best part for me was the pod of at least 12 White-Beaked Dolphins we follow for a while in between two Minkes. They were travelling but got close to the boat, leaping and breaching so we could see there were some calf and juvenile in the group. Great sighting ! On the way back, everybody enjoyed live music covering mostly some nice Beatles songs ! Everybody got home smiling !
Tour at 17:00
Report from Hafsúlan: The rain stopped again when we left the harbor. On the way into Faxaflói Bay we stopped at Akurey to watch puffins. After that we were sailing for a while and spotted two Minke Whales and three Harbor Porpoises shortly. But we headed on out in the bay until we found two Minke Whales surfacing together at the same time around our boat. They were just amazing to watch, hear and smell. We stayed with them for a long time until there were three boats around and it was getting busy in the area around those Minkes. We decided to leave them in peace and slowly headed back towards land. On our way back we spottet one more Minke Whale that we followed shortly until we definetly had to leave the bay. Great tour in a calm bay with nice Minke Whales around us.
Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding : We went out again in the same area than in the morning and found quite a lot of minke whales on this tour, very busy feeding under the surface of the water. It was really interesting to see this feeding behaviour rolling under the surface and also nice to see all the birds getting excited and knowing where the whales were and will surface. It was mostly loud Kittiwakes and gulls, but also some Gannets, Common Guillemots, arcti terns and many Puffins around too, as well as fulmars. We several times and once just in front of the boat battles or arctic skuas against kittiwakes, harrassing the poor birds to drop off the fish they had on their beaks. On our way back we stopped at akurey island and there was so manz puffins, the tide was hight so we could get closer and see them really well.
Tour at 13:00
Report from Hafsúlan: We went straight out into the bay and started searching. The earlier tour on Hafsúlan had yielded few but nice Minke Whales but for a little while we got concerned that the tour would be without success as almost 1.5 hour into it we had only seen one or two Minke Whales and each only once. However towards the end we got a bit luckier and they started showing themselves for longer than before, including two lunge feeds. We saw 3-4 Minke Whales on this tour and we also had a very short visit from Harbour Porpoises but they vanished into the deep blue water within seconds from being spotted so they don't really count as hardly anyone saw them. The Gannets were also very good on this tour. It was evident what the whales were after as parts of the sea were almost black with krill, the favourite food of Baleen Whales such as Minke Whales and Humpback Whales.
Tour at 10:00
Report from Elding : We sailed out for 30 minutes before finding our first Minke Whale. We've seen in total 5 Minkies, most of them were quite difficult and between 40 meters to 100 meters. But we saw one surfacing much closer and had a good look at it. On the way back to the puffin island Akurey, we saw a pod of 5-10 white beaked dolphins tight and fast travelling going in the opposite direction of our boat that we didnt follow for long, but most of people saw them clearly. they were at 30 meters from the boat. We also saw a Pomarine Skua chasing Arctic terns and Kittiwakes. Then we saw our cute puffins which were all around.