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.

Does the video camera work?

Well we got a small cheap video camera that fits into a small pocket. Since the salt water of the ocean can ruin an expensive camera with one wave over the bow we decide to give this a try. I think we will have to improve our filming & editing skills but it has great potential. The capture gives it an old 8mm look from my grandfather's days.

The subject's were Tim who is the mate and Captain John on "Kylie's Chance".

It will be interesting to see what the crew will video in the future, maybe they will get something that will go viral (video) so the whole world will watch.

It turned out nice in the long run.

Hello Lobsteers!
Well after raining all night and a morning of fog, the weather broke and the Scenic Lobster Tour was able to go out with a large group of people. There was over 60 people enjoying the beautiful Maine coast.
The whale boat didn't have enough people to go out in the afternoon, since the morning trip was cancelled due to weather.
The crew got a small video camera to take on the boats to document what they see and be able to put it on the Blog for you to check out. Soon we will post a short clip of what the Scenic Lobster Tour is like. We are hoping to get video of whales breaching and spy-hopping. So stay tuned for future video updates.

Remember that there is a "Cruising to the Oldies" on Sunday, July 19 at 6pm. Tickets are $25pp and reservations are required the trip will be 3 hours long. Call 207.967.5507 for more info

Who will stop the rain?

We traveled to Jefferies ledge on Friday and Saturday with mixed results since it was a little foggy out there. Sunday got rained out even though the whales are already wet.

On Friday we saw a couple of deep diving Finbacks that were doing long dives. A Finback dive can be 5 to 20 minutes and they are fast swimmers and can resurface a few miles away from where they last dove. They are not the breath holding champs that reward goes to the Sperm whale. More about that in a later blog.

But we did spot a ocean sunfish for the first time this season. An ocean sun fish can grow up to 13 feet across and weight up to 4000 pounds. It feeds mostly on jellyfish and can lay more than 300 million eggs at a time.

The Saturday trip brought gray seals, north atlantic white side dolphins and a puffin. We are seeing more puffins in the area as each year progresses. But the whales were hiding in the fog for the day. To let everyone know, if "Nick's Chance" doesn't spot whales that day everyone on board gets a non-sighting pass to come back anytime for another try. There is no expiration date on the pass. Since whales are a wild creature we can't call ahead and ask them where they are, but we do have a lot of fishing friends that tell us what they have in there area to help us narrow down the field. We don't get skunked very often but it does happen from time to time. We get clients back the next week, the next month or a couple years later. Most of the returning passengers remember us! The crew doesn't change very often for year to year, since we always have a good time together.

The picture is two north atlantic white side dolphins playing in the boat wake! They are fun to watch.

So join us for a trip this summer.

The website is wwww.firstchancewhalewatch.com. Call us at 207.967.5507

Mother Nature Rules

Well, this weekend reminded us that Mother Nature always has the upper hand. Nick' Chance didn't go out on Saturday due to weather conditions but we did go out on Sunday at 12:30pm. We had to wait for a half hour because it was dead low tide at Noon and we had to wait a bit to get more water under the boat so we could turn around in the river. Once in the Atlantic the seas were a bit high so the swells were breaking over the bow. At 15 miles out we ran into a pod of FinBack Whales diving for some food at about 300 feet. A basking shark was spotted but it didn't stay on the surface for very long.

The Scenic Lobster Tour was able to make it out both on Saturday and Sunday since it doesn't travel that far off shore. On Sunday we had a tour group from Pennsylvania which was made up of high school seniors on a final class trip/holiday before going onto college later this fall. They had a good time and the crew enjoyed their upbeat spirit. One remarked to the crew that it must be nice to have a job that didn't require you to wear shoes. Since one of the mates prefers the traction of bare feet on the deck while at sea.