The Cetacean Tour

Tour names are important to rock bands such as the Eagles Hell Freezes Over Tour. If we were a rock band on tour, we’d call it the Cetacean Tour. (Not the catchiest title I know but bear with me.)

We have seen three different cetaceans on four different days. We have seen Orcas twice, grey whales once and yesterday a couple of dolphins popped up just off our bow.

A few days ago we anchored in Sturt Bay near the top end of Texada Island. It is one of the few anchorages along Texada’s long coastline. We dropped the hook and dinghied over to the Texada Boating club docks so we could enjoy a walk through the village of Vananda Cove. At the head of the dock was a sign explaining what to do if one encountered whales–grey whales specifically. I skimmed the sign not expecting there to be any chance of seeing them. We saw them the next morning less than five nautical miles from the bay!

We tried to do what the sign said. We slowed down and steered away from the whales to keep our distance. But the whales came closer. Under sail we didn’t have much room to manoeuvre so thankfully the whales made one close pass of us and then stayed clear of us. Perhaps they were as interested in checking us out as we were of them.

A few days earlier making our way in some pretty strong winds we spotted two Orcas off our port side. We jibed in order to keep our distance. The whales disappeared from site and shortly appeared on our starboard side. They were directly in our path so we had to jibe again to avoid them.

Yesterday while making our way down Pendrell Sound two dolphins appeared just a few meters from our bow. They circled off to our right and were soon behind us.

I don’t know how many species of cetaceans live in these waters but so far we’ve seen three. That’s pretty good.