Mar 22 2007

Sailing with the whales of Southern California — Whale Alley

Published by at 16:18 under Sailing

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We’ve sailed each of the last seven days, and we’ve seen whales every day. And we’ve seen most of them in the Santa Cruz Channel … that stretch of water between Santa Cruz Island and Santa Rosa.

Bowen Point

It was like the 405 at rush hour: Grays everywhere. At on point, we were in the middle of four or five pods with four or five animals each. The whales were heading 270 and we were trying to do the same, but the wind was dead on the whales’ snouts, or whatever whales have up front. So we were forced to tack through their tracks. We were all making the same Speed of Advance, so there was no difficulty keeping a respectful distance.

There were spouts everywhere you looked and since the Gray’s spout is pretty inconsequential in the midst of white caps (it was blowing 20+), we were probably seeing only tip of the Cetacean, so to speak.

The picture, btw, is Bowen Point – near where we saw the pod of pods. Why no whale pictures?

We were too busy trying to stay out of their way and keep the boat upright.

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