Drones and whales!

Saturday dawned a little less hazy, which we were thankful for. We also realized we had made such good time overnight that we were going to be early to the Cape Cod Canal (the tide would be annoyingly against us when we got there), so we probably needed to slow down. We decided to turn off the motor and just sail! We drifted along slowly in the light breeze and enjoyed the silence. It also gave Matt an opportunity to fly his drone and get some beautiful shots of us underway. (We can’t share those just yet but will make sure they appear here in a future post!)

We put the sails away as we approached the canal (motoring is the only way to go to get through there.). It was pretty busy, it being the Saturday of a holiday weekend, so we fought wake and waves and weird currents much of the time, but we made it through. Some guy taking pictures of us on the shore as we transited the canal actually updated our profile photos on Marine Traffic, which was pretty fun. And our friend Pete came by going the opposite way on his fishing boat and snapped some photos of us as well. He surprised us so much we didn’t get any pictures of him in return (sorry Pete!)

When we exited the canal, we headed kind of toward Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, but passed it by in favor of heading to Stellwagen Bank to look for whales! And boy did we find them! We must have seen at least six of them, all putting on a show for us. We were all busy watching for more out in the same direction, when Patrick said he thought he had seen something even closer off our starboard bow. Just then, a huge whale surfaced right off our starboard side. No pictures, unfortunately – we were all totally shocked and didn’t manage to get the phones pointed the right direction – but trust me when I say 1) it was HUGE, 2) it basically seemed like a boat coming out of the ocean right next to us, and 3) it was amazing.

I definitely think this was the favorite part of everyone’s day. Yay for whales!