Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding: Learning from our experience this morning, we decided to go a less traveled route this afternoon and stick a bit closer to Esja and Akranes. As a result, our trip down Hvalfjordur was positively pleasant, with the sun shining down on us. Granted, there was still a lot of wind but our journey was a lot smoother than this morning. Because of the wind conditions it was difficult to spot any birds, let alone any cetaceans, but everyone enjoyed the scenic journey.Due to our lack of sightings, we gave out complimentary tickets.
-Rachel Pool
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: When we sailed out for this trip, we were still pleased by the warm sun. Unfortunately, the wind had not calmed down compared to the morning tour. Thus, it was also an adventurous trip with some swell. On this trip we actually saw a huge flock of birds, consisting of atlantic puffins, nothern gannets, kittiwakes, manx shearwaters, common guillemots and of course many gulls feeding. Some of these birds were occasionally chased by the nasty arctic scuas. We spend a long time with these birds hoping for whales also to show up in the area. So, we had an amazing bird watching tour!! However, we were not able to spot any cetaceans this time. In order to enable everyone to see the beautiful dolphins and whales we most of the time see here in Faxafloi, we handed out complementary tickets to our passengers to hopefully welcome them again on one of our tours.
- Nicole Koestner
Tour at 10:00
Report from Elding: The morning was definitely quite windy and we had a pretty bumpy ride on the Faxaflói. The Icelandic Rollercoaster was enjoyed by a few of our passengers (certainly, not all of them!) that even dared to stay all the tour at the bow of Elding, facing the waves! It took us more than one hour to find our firsts and only cetaceans of the tour, two minke whales! The animal, strangely, surfaced quite regularly and for more than 15 times in a row. Unfortunately the bodies of this cetaceans were quite often hidden by the waves, so it wasn't as easy to spot them. Nonetheless we had a few surfacings quite close to the boat, and hopefully most of our passengers were able to watch the animal. Time ran out so we had to come back to the old harbour. Since it wasn't the level we usually like to see, we gave to our passengers complimentary tickets that they will be able to use to enjoy a second tour with us within the next 2 years!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: The weather was so desceiving this morning with the calm sea's and little wind in and close to the harbour. Once we were out, the northeasterly winds could be seen in the distance by the white caps. The captain did a great job keeping the boat steady. We sailed straight to the area we were successful yesterday but the bird life was not as good but we still had a nice variety that many passengers enjoyed. The puffins in particular were numerous out in the bay. It took us a long time, almost 2 hours of sailing before we saw our first cetacean, a minke whale came up once and then vanished. The whales were just not playing ball this morning, very challenging. We hate to start heading home and on our way we found an awesome pod of about 5 white-beaked dolphins, they came so close to the boat and surfaced so high that we could look them in the eye. A challenging start but in the end it was a great morning at sea.
- Megan Whittaker
Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, common guillemot, atlantic puffin, arctic skua, arctic tern, eider duck, manx shearwater, lesser black-backed gull and black-legged kittiwake.
Status: RUNNING
We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. The sea will be a bit rough today, so if you are sensitive to motion sickness we do provide seasickness tablets, free of charge! We are looking forward to welcoming you on board in our search for these magnificent animals!
