Whales, dolphins & turtles – oh my! 2.25.10

Yeah! We escaped the pull of La Cruz and headed out of the bay at first light this morning. Woohoo!! The sunrise was spectacular as we left the bay and headed around the corner.



There are four boats all headed up this morning with us – Pacific Jade, Slacker, Southern Cross & Brendon. Outrider decided to stay one more day and wait for the swells to settle down a little more. We wanted out as soon as possible, swells or no swells! Haha…

And we did get swells – 5-7ft swells for most of the day with larger ones creeping up as well. Luckily though, they were pretty far apart so it wasn’t too uncomfortable. The sun was shining, the wildlife was out in force, and we even had some wind to fill our sails – life is good!

Speaking of wildlife we saw lots! I lost count of the number of whales we spotted and we had another incredible sighting of a whale, tail slapping the water beside us.



I never tire of seeing those gracious beasts and seeing the tail slap is so incredibly cool. I have a short video of it and managed to snap a few photos during the 10-15 minutes it was slapping the surface!



And then the dolphins! I haven’t seen this many dolphins racing towards us to swim in our bow wake all year!



There was a group of whales in the area which first got our attention. We slowed down to see which way they were headed as they were pretty close to us and then we realized there were a whole bunch (pack? gaggle? troop? I don’t know!) of dolphins playing in the same area. I’m pretty sure they saw us the same time we saw them and they screamed to their buddies – hey, there’s a boat – let’s go race ‘em!!



Before I knew it they were heading our way and just as suddenly, they were surrounding the bow, ducking in and out, staying just out of reach of the bow as it skinned along the surface, until they needed a breath where they would zoom away, come up for a breath, and be right back! I’ve said before, I never tire of seeing them. Whether dolphins, whales, or certainly sea turtles. We haven’t seen nearly the same amount of wildlife as we did last season, why I have no clue, so today was a welcome sight!

Here's a video of the dolphins - watch out - you may get seasick just watching it! I wasn't using my stead hand here... :-)



We made it into Mantanchen Bay anchorage around 5:30pm and dropped anchor in 12 ft of water, popped a cold beer, and enjoyed a spectacular sunset in the bay. Ahhh….life is good!

I’ll post photos & video as soon as we make it back to Mazatlan.

Until then!
Rene