We left Bunndy at 07:45 and once off the channel markers, we picked up a nice SW wind. Knowing it would not last long we soon found ourselves in a very light southerly. With this and the calm waters of Harvey Bay we should have made a good pace but this were stolen by a tidal flow of over 1 kt flowing out of the Bay which hung on until the tide change at 13:30. In any event, this all made for an easy trip with reading dominating the day but for a turtle sighting and a number of interesting whale encounters.
With the camera ready, we did expect to see whales but surprisingly they were few and far between. The first was on the surface not far from a nearby power cat that had stopped to observe. The whale seemed perfectly content to be the show and gently slid below the surface after quite enough time for photos.The next was in the form of a massive bubble trail right beside the boat. We didn’t see the critter that was making these bubbles of about a metre or so across at the surface, but the guess was it had to be a whale immediately below the boat. The final sighting was from Paul who with a yelp, pulled the throttle back to idle. Looking forward I saw only where the whale had been – just 5 metres ahead of us on the surface. Pual reported it as being a 'mid sized' and following on from the story of the whale strike last blog, this was a close call (for the whale at least).
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