A whale of a day

As often as possible, we report on the sailing adventures of the cargo brigantine Tres Hombres. Giulia, the cook, is a passionate reporter. In her latest blog, she writes about the return voyage from Dominca.

It is Sunday on the Tres Hombres. We are somewhere northeast of the Dominican Republic, our crossing home having started a few days ago. The weather is good, the sailing feels like something we haven’t experienced on this entire voyage since we left Den Helder in December: we glide gently with full sails, at a speed of 3 knots, on a seemingly flat sea, the ocean swell is so long, smooth and gentle that we can only barely perceive it. The ship lies still while moving forward. We are moving slowly, but in the right direction. We can’t complain.

As shipboard tradition dictates, on Sundays the crew wears their hippest clean clothes, takes a day off from maintenance duties, and indulges in hard chilling, whatever that means for each crew member: who is rocking in the hammock, who is reading a book, who is washing their bodies and laundry, who is taking a nap on deck while off watch. We make the most of the weather before the passage to Horta becomes more challenging. It is March and we are crossing the North Atlantic, we all know that such blessed warm days are numbered. […]

Our outside world is perfectly divided into two shades of blue. The sun covers the ocean with sparkling diamonds and our skin sweats under its power. Life is sweet! At lunch, we eat Spanish tortillas de papas, Italian bruschette di pomodoro, Mexican guacamole, Caribbean homemade hot sauce, caramelised onions and I pull out some chorizo sausages from our time in Galicia. Nick and I chat a bit while looking at this shimmering flat ocean: we discuss how little wildlife we have seen during the trip, we compare it to previous trips and wonder if the reason is bad luck, bad timing or if the oceans really are getting emptier…

After lunch, I lie in the shade on the galley roof. […] I am completely immersed in reading Paul Watson’s “In the Name of the Sea” when Nick comes up to me and hands me the binoculars: “There she blows…”. I can’t quite grasp what he is saying and I stare back at him slightly confused when he says “WHALE! By the bow! Ten o’clock, port side”.

I keep my eyes on the horizon. The crew is gathering on the foredeck. I can’t see much, so I quickly climb into the rigging to sit on the yard and improve my angle, but the main sails hide half the view. I don’t dare venture myself higher because I don’t have my harness on, so I go back on deck, decide to risk missing something and go get it, as fast as I can. Once I have it in my hands and try to put it on awkwardly because my attention and focus are on the water, I see it for the first time: the humpback fin, my favourite shape in the whole world, teetering against the blue horizon just ahead. Slow and gentle, so graceful and elegant, gleaming as it rises from the water, reflecting the sun’s rays on its lacquer-black thick skin. My eyes fill with awe and my heart with gratitude. I would already be happy and content with such a vision, and I am far from ready for what is to come….

I reach the furthest tip of the bowsprit when nozzles start appearing all around us. Within seconds, voices on both sides of the ship can be heard calling all hours of the clock. We soon understand that we are entering their playground, we are surrounded by humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) as far as your eyes can see! There were possibly about 20 of them, no less, maybe more, gathered around the Silver and Navidad Banks, two shallow spots where the seabed rises from 3000 mt to 20 mt in a handful of miles, some 35 nm northeast of La Hispaniola. Ideal areas, because here the plankton and krill they feed on are abundant and this attracts these majestic creatures that come to eat, breed and play. And the wind in our sails brought us here too! What a gift!

None of us, apart from Bedi, a Turkish trainee who works as an officer on crude oil tankers sailing the seven seas (yes, you will also come across such people as trainees on Tres Hombres!), have ever seen anything like this: squirts, flippers, pectoral skirts, dorsal fins, they are everywhere! It’s an all-you-want whale show! Everyone has their eyes wide open as if they want to embrace the whole ocean in one look. For some of my friends here, it is the first time they have seen a whale from a screen, I can hear their ooohs and wows and it fills me with joy. As I stand there on the bowsprit, I feel a tremendous awe, my heart flooded with gratitude as I feel sweet tears caressing my cheeks, aching from the size of the smile I am throwing at the world.

We are not too close to bother them, not too far away to just guess what it is and let the imagination fill in the dots. We sail at a speed of 2/3 knots, gliding calmly across this infinite blue silky canvas. We can’t get any closer, motorless as we are, and even if we tried? Would we dare? I think, hope, think, not. Not out of fear, but out of respect. I take great pleasure in knowing that, on this stretch of water, we simply coexist with them and cause minimal disruption. No underwater engine noise disrupting their communication, no spinning propeller generating ugly noises or threats. Just with our humble presence at a distance, passing by, leaving no trace with them.

From our nutshell, of course, we can only witness their activities on the surface, but my imagination runs wild and my mind dives deep with them, I imagine their whirling dances, I long to hear their chants underwater….

At one point, the louder sound of a squirt brings me back to the surface and there’s a whale! Maybe he was coming closer to check on us and report back to everyone else in case something was wrong? The proximity allowed us to appreciate the shape of the body even better as it surfaced a few times before taking one last breath and diving down to reveal its magnificent tail. A chorus of Oooohs of wonder and respect, somehow made quieter by the proximity, greeted the visit.

You might think this was it. We thought so too. But far from it! There were still spectacular moments when they breeched, flippers waving, splashing on the water, flukes coming up and diving…. I was especially amazed at the elegance and grace of their breeches. And the height of the splashes! An adult humpback whale is up to 15 (male) and 16 (female) metres long and can weigh several tonnes. They are not particularly fast swimmers, but they can gain enough momentum to propel their entire body mass out of the water in a 360-degree somersault! A bit like watching the gold medal artistic swimming at the Olympics live, but hundreds of times better, because it’s wild, and in the open Big Blue. Their movements are graceful and sometimes feel almost lazy, especially when they wave their white slim flippers (which can reach up to a third of their body length), as if someone is swimming casually on their back and taking all the time in the world to do so. After all, why speed up? Time means nothing in the whale world, I guess. Running after them even less, I’m sure.

I try my best, but I find it very difficult to describe: what it was like, how it felt. In fact, it would be hard to pick a favourite highlight from this happy, generous encounter. Probably the vertical breech of one of them, his body launched towards the sky like a rocket, teetering against the horizon, up and up and up showing more and more of his body, when he finally let go of all tension and surrendered himself to gravity and fell back into the ocean in a slow motion dive. Or the appearance and gentle disappearance of the fluke in the golden, shimmering wake of the setting sun. Or the overlapping show of bouncing, billowing, squirting and diving, all in the same place at the same time at a very short distance from each other. I can’t choose, and why should I.

After an hour and a half of whale-watching, some of us went back to do our things, content with the visions. I couldn’t get enough, but dinner had to be prepared! I rushed to the galley, luckily I had a plan and the chickpeas had been soaking for hours. I quickly peel and chop the onions, drizzle the pan with oil and put in the fastest stew I have ever made. Lid on, the cooker does the rest. Then I grab my harness again and join my husband Jules on the royal yard. The sun is about to dip into the ocean. […] Now another half-hour of roasting until the last white flipper waves us goodbye on the darkening blue ocean, as we distance ourselves from the area where they gathered and leave it in our wake. We stay above for a while with our legs dangling along the royal, literally speechless, feeling blessed and infinitely richer. The ship looks even smaller from above in all this blue. We are humbled and grateful without words. Two and more hours have passed since Nick first shouted “Whales!”. Since then, there has not been a dull moment on the waters around us. Thanks to the wise old whales, we have re-learned how precious it is to be alive, the privilege of sharing this Blue Planet with creatures capable of making us weep with awe and gratitude.

Giulia.

Read the whole blog on FairTransport‘s site.

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