Tour at 13:00
The wind had picked up a lot, but we trusted that the humpback would be close enough to the harbour and didn't cancel the tour. Good that we tried! Shortly after leaving the harbour we were surrounded by even more feeding birds than in the morning. The gannets were especially fun to watch, to see how they were fishing, while we waited and tried to find the humpback we saw this morning. It took a little while but then we finally spotted the blow!!! It behaved somewhat more quietly than in the morning, dived longer and didn't want to come close to the boat right away. But after a while it came up to breathe several times just in front of the boat! And then it started its show: lobtailing, rolling around, waving its huge fluke and laying on its back. Gorgeous!!!
Tour at 9:00
We heard that a humpback whale was close to the Hafnarfjörður harbour. So we went immediately to the area where it had been seen yesterday but nothing was there. We kept on searching until one of the crew suddenly saw a huge splash in the distance through her binoculars. This had to be the humpback whale and indeed it was! It was close to the harbour and we must have passed it while we sailed out of the harbour. We spent a long and enjoyable time with it. At first it didn't pay any attention to us. But soon it showed some interest in the boat and started to surface close to the boat quite often. The passengers, I think, were able to get a very close and good look at the whale and its fluke several times -- it was just perfect! Towards the end it breached once to everybody's surprise and this was even more perfect!!! Not to forget all the feeding birds which joined the humpback whale; kittiwakes, fulmars and lots of gannets.