Long day...

Two trips on my boat today.  I also did safety training before the trips, so it made for a long day.  It's that time of the season.

My first trip was great - I didn't get any photos, but we had a very nice Minke experience on Hein Bank: 3 Minkes, good surface activity, including some lunge feeding.  The only Orca report was too far away, but we saw a lot of other wildlife, including a large Stellar Sea Lion that was pulling itself up on the rocks.  Impressive.  The guests were very happy with their afternoon on the boat.  Beautiful weather and nearly calm water.  Nice!

My evening trip started with no Orca reports.  I headed south, then got a report of transient Orcas north... U-turn and put the coals to it!  We were in Cattle Pass when I got the report, the whales were on the northwest side of Orcas Island, moving south.  I knew we could get to them within an hour.

Again, water conditions were flat calm, no wind, and comfortably warm.  There were a dozen or so boats looking at the whales, and the they (the whales) were being a bit elusive.  Because our boat is taller than most, I was able to see a couple other Orcas in the distance... we left the "conga line" of boats and were able to get two whales all to ourselves.

I wasn't able to get many photos (the workin' stuff cuts into the photo ops)...

The best part of the evening was the beautiful light.  As we approached Flat Top...

The whales were between us and that island - their "blow" (the spray from their blow-hole) was backlit in the dwindling sunlight.  I wish I had gotten a photo of that - it really was beautiful.

A couple sunset images on the way back to Friday Harbor...