Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: It´s incredible to say but before we left the harbour we could feel that it was a little bit warm, even for a cold country like Iceland, but indeed we had such a nice weather that all our hopes were pretty well sustained. The wind practically disappeared and sea state was so calm that it looked like a mirror. All these conditions were a nice omen for a fantastic whale-watching tour and it was! It didn´t take too long until we spotted our first cetacean: a minke whale! We are used to elusive minke behaviour but this one wasn´t bothered at all by our presence and she had even surfaced next to the boat few times giving us really nice pictures. But of course, today it seemed to be full of minke whales around and we could see them few times, close and far in the distance. After our minke-ecstasy moment, we decided to sail a little bit more and we found an incredible surprise: a big pod of harbour porpoises. These animals tend to avoid any contact with our vessels, more than any others, but today they seemed to like our presence surrounding our boat few times and doing the so-called "human-watching", they were observing us more than in the other way! They even delighted our porpoise-followers with some jumps out of the water. Apart from that, seabirds were playful today and some little puffin gave us good moments when flying. The way back was peaceful and we enjoyed the sun in a fantastic evening at Faxafloi.
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding: Beautiful! Sunshine and only little wind made this a super pleasant trip. After an hour of enjoying the ride across Faxafloi with the beautiful icelandic scenery around us, we got into an area with large flocks of birds and really started scanning the water surface. We had 3 minke whales around us, all feeding, coming up really nicely and even showing their rostrum! And as if that hadn't been great enough, we encountered a wonderful pod of 3 white-beaked dolphins that stayed with us for nearly an hour, bowriding, waveriding, diving from one side of the boat to the other to look at us and even leaping out 10 metres in front of the boat. I think everyone of us was smiling for the rest of the day.
- Sabrina Voswinkel
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: A stunning afternoon, wind dropped even more and everyone was out on deck sunbathing. I little chilly heading out against the wind but it was so peaceful and warm on the way home. We headed straight to the usual spot of today´s success and the flocks of feeding frenzied birds were still around. A big blow was seen after 40 minutes of sailing, the blow looked to be that from a humpback whale as it was spotted a good 2-3km in the distance. A minke whale then suddenly got our attention as it surfaced just in front on the boat and once leaving the minke the big blow was not found again. An additional 6-7 more minke whales popped out during the tour but because they were feeding they were quite unpredictable in their surfacing and thus you had to be looking at the right place at the right time. A pod of 2-3 harbour porpoises showed up at one flock of birds and to top of the tour a nice pod of 6-8 white beaked dolphins were also encountered at the end. They were beautiful to watch travelling just beneath the water´s surface. An incredible day to be out at sea.
- Megan Whittaker
Tour at 10:00
Report from Eldey: Wow what a beautiful day! The sun was shining, the sea was fairly calm and there was very little wind. On heading out into the bay today we could see it was alive with life! There were so many large flocks of feeding seabirds, which was just magnificent to see. These flocks comprised of black-backed gull, kittiwake, common gull, northern fulmar, arctic tern, northern gannet and arctic skua. But under the flocks were the animals we had come to see, the cetaceans! Numerous minke whales surfaced taking large mouthfuls of fish as it rose to the surface. At one point three minkes were surfacing all at once! Truly fantastic and often raised their rostrums out of the water as they surfaced. Throughout the tour we saw at least seven different minke whales and a few beautiful harbour porpoises popped up and even swam right below the bow which was awesome. I have no doubt all were very happy, myself included!
- Tess Hudson
Tour at 9.00
Report from Eldey: This morning trip was a great start into a very sunny day. With almost now swell and only a slight breeze we had optimal whale watching conditions today. After about 25 minutes of sailing when everyone just found a good spot to sit and enjoy the sun we spotted our first whale. We saw a few massive blows in the distance. When we came closer, the whale, a humpback whale, kept some distance to the boat, but the most of us saw its back and its fluke two times. As it was a rather small individual, this might have been a very young humpback whale. Some time later, after heading further out, we found ourselves in between two huge flocks of feeding birds, accompanied by 3-4 minke whales feeding in the same area. Two of these beauties surfaced a couple of times close to our vessel so that everyone got a good look at them. While waiting for these big guys to show up again and again we also enjoyed to watch two pods of 4-6 harbour porpoises, which were very curious checking out the bow of the boat. What a great day with all these minkes and porpoises around.
- Nicole Koestner
Bird species seen on todays tours: Atlantic Puffin, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Common Guillemot, Arctic Tern, Northern Gannet, Northern Fulmar, Arctic Skua, Eider Duck, Kittiwake, Manx Shearwater, Razorbill
Status: RUNNING
We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. The weather is lovely and the sun is out but there could be some movement on the boat out on Faxabay. We do provide seasickness tablets for you to take before the tour if you are sensitive to motion sickness, free of charge!
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