Final Fling of Season?

It looks like that Mother Nature is going to give us a hard time in getting out to see the whales for one last time before Columbus Day. The sea conditions look like it is going to be a bit on the windy side. But we are going to cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Funny reply of the week. Someone asked us if we gave senior discounts on whale tickets. And one of our quick witted associates said that we don't believe in age discrimination thus we didn't have a senior discount.

It has been very busy in the Kennebunk area we are still getting a lot of cruise ship buses out of Portland, Maine. Yesterday it was the Queen Victoria out of South Hampton, England on a 24 day tour.

Cruise Ship Buses

Well the marina parking lot is filling up....with cruise ship buses. Some of the the people are going out on the Scenic Lobster Tour which is very nice.

I believe there were 11 buses at this point in time when we took the rooftop picture. Each bus holds 45 to 50 people. So the marina parking czar/bus wrangler helped unload approximately 600 people to hit all the shops and restaurants in the area.

It's part of the Stimulus Package Program.... I am jesting, of course.

Pirate Day?

I just found out that it is International Talk like a Pirate Day on September 19th! Who would have guessed.

Check out this website it is pretty funny. http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

The whale boat is winding down, we are just doing weekends, hopefully until Mid -October. We just need some hearty souls to venture out with us. The leaf peepers don't want to leave their buses.

The scenic boat is doing well we had two groups go out and that was 88 people on board. The weather was nice and everyone had a good time.

Labor Day Weekend

It seems that just a few days ago it was Memorial Day and we were just starting up the Whale Watching season. Now we have just finished the Labor Day Weekend and while we are still going out to see the whales we have cut back the trips to the weekends only. We will still be busy doing the fall charters, as well as the regular trips so, both September and October will be fairly busy for us.

I have gotten a few pictures that were e-mailed to us from some of our patrons that were on the Whale Boat in August and I thought I would share them with everyone! I do have permission to do so.

This breaching Humpback Whale was photographed by Katie aged 12 from New Jersey on August 8, 2009! I believe Katie got the shot that all of us look for on a Whale cruise!

This next one was taken by Peter Figlia, the picture was sent to us by Sandy King, she was very proud of the pictures that her brother-in-law took that day. It shows a Humpback whale bubble feeding. In fact, on the day it was two whales bubble feeding together, you can see the second whale starting to come thru the surface on the left.

If I remember correctly, these two whales breached together later in the cruise!

I am also passing on the following link to see other whale pictures from a passenger on Nick's Chance. She shot so many that she posted them on Shutterfly for all to see. If you want prints just follow the instructions on Shutterfly. Here is the link: http://whales81809.shutterfly.com/

So if you want to go out and see the whales this fall give us a call at 207.967.5507. We are located in Kennebunk, Maine lower village next to the Kennebunk River.

Video of a Humpback bubble feeding.

The mates were going thru the camera on the boat and found that we had some video of a bubble feeding humpback whale. So we are going to post it so you can see what we have been seeing on the boat this summer.

We also had an interesting question posed this week by a whale watcher. The question was if you followed the latitude (N 43"20'45.22) on leaving the Kennebunk River where would you end up on the other side of the Atlantic. The answer is, La Coruna, in Northern Spain. We broke out the big marine maps once we got back to port to check it out. The range that people were guess was southern France to Portugal.

And the funny question of the week given to us by Ian, was "Why is the river running in reverse? The answer was that the kennebunk river is a tidal river and the tide was coming back in. We have a 9 to 10 foot tide change every 6 hours from high tide to low tide.

Fall brings the unusual....

Tomorrow is September 1st and today was the first day that the whale boat was able to get out after the weekend storm. It was filled with the strange and unusual. It was just different on the water today, hard to explain, but it just was!

We saw a juvenile puffin, north Atlantic white sided dolphins, a sea turtle was reported but not verified, minkes and finbacks doing long dives.

One thing for sure we did not see this! But, perhaps next time.

Pictures from a different point of view

Captain Gary piloting the Whale Boat "Nick's Chance"


We have had the good fortune to have a series of pictures shot by a photographer from the Philadelphia area and his name is Julian Kornacki. He is a destinations wedding and portrait photographer. You can check out his website at http://www.juliankfoto.com/

We are showing a series of pictures that he took on a recent trip within the past 2 days.

Mr. Kornacki used a fisheye lense to take these pictures, kind of fitting since we were on the ocean looking for whales. He was trying to get a series of photos showing the life on the boat while enroute to the whale feeding grounds.

Waves crashing by the port side.

People relaxing in the sun while enroute.

The stern of the boat in the following shots. We are moving at about 14 knots.

People sitting on the bow looking for the great white whale.

Enjoying the day

Back at the dock! You can see the people unloading on the port side towards the rear of

"Nick's Chance."

I would like to thank Mr Julian Kornacki in sharing his pictures. Don't forget to check out his website at http://www.juliankfoto.com/.

If you have been on Nick's Chance or Kylie's Chance and have pictures to share please email them to us at firstchancewhalewatch@gmail.com. We will post them on the blogspot.

Thanks Julian!

He has promised to send us more in the coming days.