Monday, January 27, 2014

  Our sunrise very, very, early this morning

 

Still very early, but even more beautiful !

 

 Short-finned pilot whales

 

 More pictures of them

 

 And more....

 

One of them spraying as (s)he went by !

The short-finned whale has a stocky body, a bulbous forehead, no prominent beak, long flippers sharply pointed at the tip, black or dark grey color, and the dorsal fin set forward on body. The flukes are raised before a deep dive; they may float motionless at the surface, frequently are seen in very large groups, prefer deep water, and may be approached. Their diets are composed of fish, squid, and octopus.

Adults males are about 18 feet in length, whereas adult females only reach about 12 feet in length. Adults can weigh from 2200 to 6600 pounds. When they are born, short-finned pilot whales are about 4 ft 7 in–6 ft 3 in long and weigh about 130 lb. Males live nearly 45 years, whereas females can live up to 60 years.

 

We were up and on our way at 0400 this morning.  Neither Gary, nor Bob, got any sleep last night.  It was just so rough out.  Poor Gary hasn’t slept for two days !  We were supposed to go to Fort Lauderdale today but the water is so rough and the winds are stronger than they are supposed to be, so we are just beat-feeting it to Lake Worth, that’s the shortest distance we can travel to get to the states.  

 

On our way out, about an hour into the trip, we noticed water coming into the starboard.  Come to find out it was the bilge pump (the thing that’s supposed to save our life) was actually bringing water into the boat from all the slapping.  I had to take everything out of our forward stateroom to find the leak….now I have to put everything back.  Luckily, safety Bob, had an emergency bilge pump on board because the one we had in the bilge stopped working.  But all is well now.   

The winds have been blowing anywhere from 18 to 25 knots all morning long.  What happened to our perfect window????  It was a little rougher than any of us wanted but we are almost to the coast now.  We are beginning to see the skyline, and what a fine skyline it is!! You gotta love the USA!! 

What a once in a lifetime opportunity we just had!  There was a pod of Short-finned pilot whales just hanging around waiting for us to see them !  There were probably 14 of them in total.  I took about 50 pictures and will put 3 or 4 of them on the blog.  Bob took lots of video, so I’m hoping to put some of it on the blog also.