I was up all night studying...

I had to go in for a Pee Test this morning.  Part of the job.  The clinic has a new "system": instead of them dealing with the Maritime Consortium, they now "think it is better" if they check you in as though you were a new patient of theirs.  The old way, it took about a half hour... the new way: about an hour and 15 minutes, mostly giving them personal information on every living relative you know about.

Then, a scoot commute to Roche Harbor for some whale watching.  Well, except there were no reports.  Then, a sketchy report... the kind you can't put a lot of stock in until you hear it from another boat driver.  This one was in Canadian water.  Not a firm location, but a general area.  Then, another report - solid, but a bit out of our range and moving away from us.

A nice group of guests on the boat, and they were excited to see some whales.  My naturalist is batting 1000, and she wants to keep it that way... no pressure.  I decided to go for the closer report in Canadian water.

You see, I was feeling pretty lucky.  The weather weasels were calling for a 40% chance of precip and building winds.  It was supposed to move into the area mid-afternoon.  I considered driving the truck across the island, but opted for the scoot and some rain gear... hoping I wouldn't need the rain gear.

It was a beautiful sunny day.  Reasonably light winds.  All day.  Yep, feeling lucky.

The group of whales we were looking for were transients.  From what I could hear on the radios, most of the boats went the other way.  When we found the whales (Yea!), there was only one other boat there... and he waited for us to get on the scene before he left.  We had this nice group of transients to ourselves.  I reported the position and for the next hour, only one other boat joined us.  I waited around for another boat to get to the whales before we left (the other one had already left).  Our own private viewing!

They were moving around, so I didn't have time to shoot much...

There was a big male, three or four females, and a youngster.  They surfaced together quite a bit, I just didn't have enough hands for the helm and the camera most of the time.

The guests were happy, the naturalist was happy, and I have to admit: I was pretty darn happy.  And did I mention: the sun was shining and the wind hadn't kicked up.

Even on the ride home, I was able to leave off a couple layers.  And the rain gear stayed in my pack.

We'll see how tomorrow (Friday the 13th, with a full moon) plays out.  ;-)