A Trip Down Memory Lane

Today I went out on schooner Haukur for the 11 o’clock tour, which has been set up as an extra tour these last days, with captain Alli and some 18 enthusiastic whale watchers. This was my first trip this season on one of the schooners, but usually they are used for the longer tours; Whales, puffins and sails.
So it was a pleasure getting a chance to sail on Haukur on a regular whale watching tour. I told the passengers how the boat looked when I first started working for North Sailing, she was like the others, with a wheelhouse and everything and I was used to sit on top of the wheelhouse looking for whales. Then, in beetween, it was rebuild as a two masted schooner and since then another boat of North Sailing’s, Hildur, has also been changed into schooner.

One of my most rememberable whale watching tours was actually on “old” Haukur, it was an evening tour in early summer 2001 and the bay was completely full of herring. Something quite unusual and even the captain had never seen anything like this before, in Skjálfandi bay. Another description of herring, in icelandic, is “Silver of the Sea” – and the bay actually looked silvery. There were birds feeding and Minke whales everywhere we looked! There were at least 30 Minke whales around us, so, instead of sailing back and forth and between the whales, we stopped the boat and switched the engine off. The boat was still and sea was calm and quiet. We could hear the Minkes come up to breath everywhere around us, they were feeding so close to the boat, not at all interrupted by these curious passengers onboard. There we stayed for almost two hours, having hot chocolate and enjoying wild nature at it’s best!

And back to the today’s tour – we managed to find some White beaked dolphins, Harbour porpoises and Minke whales!

Huld, guide