Friday, 13 July 2012

Tour at 20:30

Unfortunately we will have to cancel the 20:30 tour due to unfavourable weather conditions out at Faxaflói Bay. Our office is open until 9 PM so please drop by or call if you have any concerns about your reservation on this tour. We will be happy to help.

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed again from Grindavík this very windy afternoon. The wind had picked up a lot but we were eager to find the whales again. We saw lot of seabirds, diving gannets, arctic scuas, puffins, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, arctic terns and lot of sea gulls. Some of the gannets where diving and only that is a very nice sighting. But we had no luck with the whales and we hope for a better luck tomorrow.

Tour at 14:00

Unfortunately we will have to cancel the 14:00 tour due to unfavourable weather conditions out at Faxaflói Bay, next tour is scheduled at 17:00 from Grindavík. Our office is open until 9 PM so please drop by or call if you have any concerns about your reservation on this tour. We will be happy to help.

Tour at 13:00 Report from Hafsúlan: Because of the bad weather forecast for our Faxaflói bay we decided to do our midday tour from Grindavík. We did not have to search long until we found the first minke whale. He surfaced several times and we saw his black back with the dorsal fin very good. After a while we decided to go further on in order to look for other species. On our way we went very close to the cliff Krísuvíkurbjarg and we watched and listened to the sea birds breeding there at the moment. We also saw nothern gannets the largest sea birds in the North Atlantic and we were able to see their orange heads very good. Unfortunatately there were no more whales around and therefore we just enjoyed the sailing and went back to the harbour.

Tour at 10:00

Report from Hafsúlan: This time we sailed out from Grindavík. We had our hopes high for this tour as the captain and the engineer spotted a pod of orca on the way from Reykjavík to Grindavík when they were moving the boat. We went straight to that area they saw the whales but no luck there. We searched in a very large area, sailed pass Gunnuhver, a hot spring very close to the shore, and other beautiful cliffs with the ocean hitting the cliffs. After about 2 1/2 hours of searching we were nearly giving up hope when suddenly a very large black dorsal fin popped up very close to us! We had two orcas just next to us! One of them swam away but the other one stayed with us. It was like it was checking us out. Surfacing right in front of us, under the boat and up again! This was truly amazing experience with this magnificent animal.

Tour at 09:00 Report from Elding: Our morning tour was very special because we had the luck to enjoy two humpback whales. We were still on our way in the bay as we suddenly had a breaching humpback whale very close to us. It was totally unexpected and therefore most of us could only see the big splashes he produced. A few passengers just looked in the right direction and they could see the whole whale out of the water. As we came closer we recognised that there were even two whales travelling very close together. They surfaced several times and often they came almost at the same time out of the water. It was great to see their big bodies, they also produced very big blows and one of the guys showed us also several times his fluke before he dived down. Although they did not breach again it was very impressive to watch them. We stayed for the whole tour with them and twice we saw them only 10 meters from the boat and we were able to see the long white flippers close under the water surface.