Le Voyage: Wild Kingdom

Wait, aren't we supposed to be resting?

Our final day aboard is a day at sea. Fog dominates our view when we awake. Maybe this will be the day when the excitement abates, and we can recuperate a bit before our adventure in Vancouver.

After a late breakfast, we retire to the library, so I set up my tablet and keyboard and catch up on my journal entries. While there, the captain announces that the fog will mess with our schedule. They have to disembark an ill passenger, so a Coast Guard boat is coming to meet us, but our pilots for the Canadian portion of our trip can't get to us so, if I understand correctly, we'll be cruising outside the entrance to the passageway we'll be taking for a while before making another attempt to pick up our pilots.

Once we're in the passageway, I think it's the Johnstone Strait, we're supposed to sail through some prime Orca watching areas. We'll see how that goes.

Island in the passageway. The dark spot near the center
of the lower third of the pic might be a whale,
or it might be a log. Hard to say.

After about an hour and a half, the fog seems to be lifting and the captain announces we'll be able to pick up our pilot, but because of tidal conditions, we won't be going through an area called the Seymour Narrows until after dark.

Sandra, the naturalist, later explains to a group of us that the tidal currents in the Narrows are so strong that ships only go through during slack periods. The next one won't be until 11 p.m. We had hoped to be outside when we made that passage because the area is supposed to really live up to its name, and we wanted to see how close the ship was to shore while making the passage.
In a guidebook we've picked up, we read that a large underwater rock, Ripple Rock, used to pose a threat to ships navigating the passage. Various efforts were make to blow the rock up, but nothing succeeded until authorities tunneled into the rock from a nearby island, stuff it full of explosives and set off what is regarded to be the largest non-nuclear explosion ever. There's a nice little video of it here: Ripple Rock explosion


Sandra had said we'd be in the whale-watching area at about 5 p.m., and she'd be on the Promenade deck up in the bow if anyone wants to join her, which we do.

We're not up there long before she spots orca fins, and then the party begins. Several orcas show up, as do some humpbacks. In the beginning, we're mostly spotting orca fins and humpback blows, but shortly the action picks up. People spot the orcas jumping, and off to the port side we see an orca and a humpback surfacing near a small boat. Not long after that, one humpback surfaces forward and begins putting on quite a show. A couple of others will dive during this time, and Sharon winds up with a couple of great shots of the tail fluke on one humpback and the pectorals of the cavorting humpback.

Sea lions hanging out on shore.

Not sure how close this humpback is to that boat,
but it's close enough, I reckon.

Sharon's pic of a tail fluke, probably of a diving humpback.

Someone spots sea lions on the shore off the starboard side, which I get a picture of, and Sharon gets a pic of another bunch on an islet to the port side of the forward bow. About the time the whale and sea lion show begins to abate, groups of white-sided porpoises start jumping out of the water forward, then turn as a group and charge straight at the ship.


Excitement runs high on the deck, as you can imagine, and it's a tribute to the stability of a large ship that it doesn't rock back and forth from people charging to each side whenever an animal is spotted. Mercy, what a time. This is one of those times when I wish I were good at waxing poetic.


Sandra tells us this is the best whale watching she's seen this season. Just when we thought the wonderment was over, we're blessed with another amazing day at sea.


The rest of the evening is a bit more prosaic. The usual dinner and a show. We've had to pack up all our stuff, except what we'll sleep in and wear in the morning, and they've taken our luggage away. We hang out late on the balcony hoping to see at least the shadow of land as we pass through the narrows. For the first time on the cruise, stars are visible at night, and though I'm pretty sure we miss the Narrows, we soon spot lights on shore, and they appear to be pretty close.


We're in Vancouver in the morning, where we'll debark and spend the day exploring the city, and as has always happened, we're set to be one of the last groups to leave. I don't know how we do that. We even wind up having the same color code for our departure group we always have. We go to bed thinking the excitement must surely be over. As Sundance said to Butch, "You just keeping thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at."