✔ TOUR ON SCHEDULE | at 20:30
Report from Elding: It was a beautiful evening tour, the sun casted orange and yellow colors over the mountains. We sailed towards the areas where the minke whales were seen earlier today. After a while a mysterious blow appeared, but no animal showed itself. Splashes at a great distance caught our eye, these turned out to be 4 white beaked dolphins, 2 adults and 2 juveniles. At first they were elusive but towards the end they gave us an amazing show, jumping, tail slapping, surfing the waves, and approaching the boat! On our way back in another pod of 5 white beaked dolphins suddenly appeared and disappeared almost as fast! This was overall a nice experience with dolphins in the evening sun!
-Sigurlaug Sigurdardottir
✔ TOUR ON SCHEDULE | at 17:00
Report from Eldey: On this sunny evening, we sailed in Faxaflói bay in very pleasant sea conditions. The wind being not very strong, almost all our passengers were in the outside deck, enjoying the amazing views of the mountains. The famous volcano Snæfellsjökull was easy to see during the whole trip. We were looking for the white-beaked dolphins that we were seeing in the previous tour, when 2-3 harbour porpoises were spotted near the boat crossing the water with ease. At this moment we also saw a mother white beaked dolphin with her calf, and a few minutes later, the blow of a minke whale ! We saw it's curved dorsal fin two times before it went for a deeper dive and probably moved to an other area. A few moments later we did see another minke whale but it fastly disappeared under the surface. We were quietly going back, looking at the birds and beautifull landscape, when an other white beaked dolphin with it's calf just crossed the boat ! We saw them swim into the sunglare until we lost sight of them. What a good way to finish the day !
-Miquel Pons
✔ TOUR ON SCHEDULE | at 14:00
Report from Elding: The wind had calmed down and the sea was not as rough as this morning. We sailed out while enjoying the sunlight and the visibility in the bay. There were quite a few birds around, and after a while we spotted a minke whale! It surfaced only once and went back down for a deeper dive. We saw it pop up again a couple of times, but unfortunately this minke whale was quite elusive and didn't seem to be in the mood for whale watching, so we lost sight of it and were unfortunately not able to find any other whales before we ran out of time. Of course we enjoyed the good weather and beautiful scenery, but we offered our passengers complimentary tickets allowing them to come back for free, or go on a whale watching tour from Akureyri in the North of Iceland. Hope to see these lovely faces again soon!
-Kristín Viðja Harðardóttir
✔ TOUR ON SCHEDULE | at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The moment we left the harbour the wind was not blowing that much, it gave the opportunity to go straight out to the middle of the bay. It was for us a successful decision because after 50 minutes sailing we saw a pod of 7- 10 white-beaked dolphins surfing the surface and jumping out of the water. We also saw them ‘’bow riding’’ (playing in the waves in front of the another whale watching vessel) for a short time. More vessels came the area so we left to reduce the traffic around the dolphins so they can feed in peace. 10 minutes later we saw a huge flock of birds, we went there to have a better look to see if might be accompanied by another animals. But it wasn’t at that moment, we kept ours eyes wide open and saw a blow in a distance, few miles away. We saw the blow twice and waiting a long time in hope of seeing it again. Unfortunately, we didn’t and our time was running out. We decided to go back to the harbour. Due to the difficulty finding the whales and short dolphin sightings we offered our passengers complimentary tickets to come again without any extra cost and see how beautiful wildlife can be in this bay.
- Jose Manuel Marco
✔ TOUR ON SCHEDULE | at 10:00
Report from Elding: The last few days the wind forced us to stay on land most of the tours so we were excited to be able to restart our trips. As we left the harbour, the wind was blowing intensively but, little by little, the strengh was getting lower and lower. After approximately 1 hour sailing, we saw a huge flock of thousands of birds. We decided to take a better look to see if they were accompanied by any other bigger animal. And, bingo! First of all, a small blow appeared at 10 o'clock and after a minute we could see the shape of our first minke whale. It surfaced briefly two more times but, apparently, it decided to go somewhere else so we continued our coarse. It was a really brief sighting but it gave us a nice first feeling of the wonders of the nature. After a few minutes more sailing, surrounded by hundreds of sea birds, another black shape appeared really close to the boat. Another minke whale! This time we could enjoyed it for a longer time. It even showed us the mouth opened while eating a couple of times, demonstrating how hungry it was. While observing this one, we had the luck to cross our way with another two minke whales!! A total of 4 minke whales were delighting us while the sunshine was shining really bright. It is aways a pleasure to start the day like this.
-Elena Gutiérrez Ruiz
✔ TOUR ON SCHEDULE | at 9:00
Report from Eldey: It was still blowing this morning as we headed out into the bay. Northerly winds of 6-10m/s. It calmed down as the tour went on and we could go out into the middle of the bay, areas we havent been able to go to the last days due to the coppy seas. We travelled north and the other companies travelled south to search more of the bay. After about an hour and a half of searching we heard that the south was a bit more productive with birds and some quick glances of minke whales. Once arriving to the area a passenger spotted a dorsal fin but eventhough we stopped and waited it was unfortunately not seen again. Flocks of birds were starting to form and it looked to be very promising, however by this time we sadly had to head back to port to be ready for the next tour. We still enjoyed the tour with the sunshine, landscape and birdlife. Due to lack of whale sightings we offered our passengers complimetary tickets to come again for free and hope to see the amazing life we do get in the bay.
- Megan Whittaker
Birds seen today: atlantic puffin, arctic skua, arctic tern, northern gannet, eider duck, common gull, black-legged kittiwake, great black-backed gull, glaucus gull, black guillemot, common guillemot, northern fulmar, manx shearwater.
We are sailing from the Old Harbour in Reykjavík today. It is quite windy on the bay today so the seas are rough, so if you are prone to seasickness we have some seasickness tablets free of charge at our ticket office. The sun is shining, but make sure to dress warmly and make use of our warm overalls as it is always colder on sea than on land. For more information contact us by email elding@elding.is or by phone +354 519 5000.
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