bora bora to tonga - day/night#5

well...what a day!
just after sending out the last blogpost and complaining about not having seen any whales yet...
just after being annoyed that the bloody cockpit speaker for the vhf is playing up again....
just while mark and i were talking that both feel a bit tired....

a loud sound came from just 15m behind our stern " pffffffft"...something that sounded like a massive blowhole.
and there he was - our first whale! a massive animal at least 1,5 times the length of our boat (about 20m) swimming at first right behind and then right next to us checking us out.
after guessing that he is a humpback he showed us his back fin which let us identify him as a fin whale (thanks to our sea mammal identifying card;))

and apparently he liked what he saw and decided to stay with us for over an hour.
we missed a few heartbeats there as he was performing the most amazing stunts (his view of things) and sheer madness (our few of things) crossing our bow while we were doing around 7,5-8kn and speeding up going down a wave 4-5 times so close, that we stopped breathing. we talk 1m meter here - not more.
so after having found that maloo means no harm he must have decided to try if she counts as a play friend - surfing our waves like i only thought dolphins or small melon head whales (3-4m) do.

for us simply the most amazing and also a tiny bit scary experience.

so for a loong long time he swam next to us, starboard then port - went ahead and then waited again for us to catch up.
after while the conversation with maloo must have got a bit too one sided for him so he left us with a cheerful "pfffft"

and what have i learned from this experience?

well, firstly, whales are truly amazing and this one was particularly beautiful- the sheer size is just mind-blowing! secondly, that they are inquisitive and playful...makes for a good pet, doesn't it?
and i also figured out how they cope in those big seas: they simply surf the waves breathing on their way down. they can swim amazingly fast - way faster than we can sail (makes you wonder how they caught them in the old days without "research vessels")

it is quite fascinating how we sat on our maloo in these still not easy conditions looking at each other and saying how stupid we are not having taken a plane to tonga (there would be tomato juice!) - and then you spot a whale - this wild animal comes and interacts with you... and all of a sudden everything is worth while.....or at least till the next wave crashing into the cockpit wakes you from your daydream.

during the night the conditions slightly eased off and we had only a couple small squalls. every now and then the sea was quite messy...but in the morning, when the sun came up guess who was there next to us again: our whale! (maybe a different one....but it definitely was a fin whale again - could be that he was traveling with us most of the night....)

stay with us, big friend....we heard some japanese spoken out there on the vhf and enormous fishing vessels without ais....hope they're just after tuna.