Georgia On My Mind...

If you said, "Ray Charles or Willie Nelson," you get 100 bonus points.  If you said, "Written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell," you get 1,000 bonus points!

We had an evening charter last night.  I will admit I have to pump myself up to keep my ass from dragging when the work day goes into the evening.  But, big props to the family on my charter: they left from Chicago in the morning.  Rented a car and drove to Anacortes (through all the crazy traffic in Seattle, with Fleet Week and the Blue Angles performing), parked their car and got on the ferry that arrives in Friday Harbor at 5:50, came direct to our boat for a 6:00 departure... then, we ran to the Straight of Georgia (long trip) to get them to the whales, our return trip, got them back to the dock at 9:18... the ferry back to the mainland was 12 minutes behind us.  That is a long trip back (2 hours) because it stops at the other 3 islands on the way back to the mainland.  Then, they will have the 1.5 to 2 hour drive back to Seattle.  That is some special kinda stamina.

Nice folks: Mom, Dad, 2 college age kids, and one high schooler.  And everyone seemed to be getting along.  Maybe they were just exhausted?  ;-)

The trip: to keep weight light for faster speed, I put on enough fuel for just this trip.  With only 5 passengers, this boat flies... I was able to run 2 to 3 knots faster than my normal cruise speed.  I had two options for going north: transient whales (3 reported) were closer; J-Pod (with 25+ whales) were a bit further.  I chose to go for the Ts (transients), considering all the logistics.

A couple miles from the whales, we got "blue lighted" by a Canadian Coast Guard boat.  With their flashing blue light going, a came to a stop to let them come aside.  They were mostly interested in talking with my pretty naturalist, rather than the old captain at the helm.  "Yes, we have all the safety gear onboard - we are a US commercial operator, Coast Guard inspected boat, not an uninspected (6 pack) vessel.  They backed away and I put the hammer down again.

Our first view of the whales...

The male with this group is huge.  Two other females.  Fortunately, there were being reasonably surface active.

We spent about a half hour with these animals, moving east.  I was tracking the larger group of Js - they were slowly moving southwest.  When I figured we could get to them in less than 10 minutes, and would actually put us a little closer to home, I let our naturalist know we were moving on.  Yeah, I heard a slight groan from a couple of the guests.

The sun was getting low as we got to J-Pod... and they were being very active!  First view in the distance...

I got us positioned, and an amazing viewing unfolded in front of us: breaches, tail slaps, spy hops, pec slap, a cartwheel, all kinds of great behavior...

The viewing of the season for me.  Making the decision to leave the Ts to get to the Js was the right call.  I kept a close watch on the time, constantly calculating the time it would take us to get back to Friday Harbor.  It would be after dark, but there should be some twilight left so I could see any debris in the water.

Nice sunset views on the way back...

Arriving back at Friday Harbor...

No, that isn't our guests' ferry at the terminal - that one is parked for the night.  I saw the lights of the other ferry as we made our turn into Friday Harbor.

Nice evening.