First Trip Out of the 2010 season!

We had a nice day on the first cruise of the 2010 season. Had a humpback calf that was very frisky and did quite a few breaches. Also had a close encounter as they passed right by "Nick's Chance".

So the first video is the calf breaching, it looks better on the big screen. It was video taped in HD and it is only 9 seconds.

The second video is the calf coming in to check us out. So the whales are out there. Come on down and go whale hunting with us in the deep blue Atlantic.

Moby Dick.....the opera?

I was listening to NPR this morning, as I am prone to do on Sunday's and I heard that the Dallas (Texas) Opera House is doing an opera based on Herman Melville's book "Moby Dick." I thought that was intriguing, if one has read the book which is quite long and full of allegories in reference to religion, slavery and the basic human relationship to oneself while giving the first detail written history of the whaling industry, one has to wonder how do you score that to music?

Do you think the Ogunquit Playhouse will be doing this one soon?

The question is what part should Captain Gary play?

Check it out if you want.

http://www.dallasopera.org/the_season/091004-index.php

We are on Facebook

Well "First Chance Whale Watch" has a Facebook page. So if you have a facebook page we would like for you to become of of our friends. Let's see if we can get over 100 friends by the start of the Whale Season.......

Some of our friends have already started posting pictures of their trip with us.

Winter is approaching..

Oh the weather out there is cloudy, the christmas music is playing on the radio, and I would like to go out for a boat ride. I guess that is not possible since the Whale Boat is all weather proofed and sealed up with plastic on the upper decks. The marina is filled up with boats and all buttened up for the first of the snow storms that are yet to come. I am hoping the snow will be delayed until January..

Hey Captain Adam when are you going to take your charter boat out for the season? Or is that the new tender for "Nick's Chance"?

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.

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.

Hurricane Bill vs "Flipper"

Well the seas have been rough and all the boats have been tied up to the docks since Saturday, due to Hurricane Bill. We spent a few of those days doing general maintence on the Whale Boat and now that is done.

So, since a few of us has a few days off now, let's watch the orginal television show "Flipper" on Hulu.com. Just to stay in the mood of aquatic world.

It's a wonderful whale world

These past days have been unbelievable. The whale sightings have been off the chart. We have been having breaching whales left and right or port and starboard off "Nick's Chance". The bubble feeding has been amazing. At one time we just stopped the boat and were surrounded by 12 to 20 Humpback whales. Also the Fin back whales have been very active, one group had a posse of white sided dolphins following them. I do have pictures and video of a lot of this so be patience and we get them up on the site as soon as possible. Nicole has her work cut out for her in trying to identified all these whales.

So come on out and join us. We have been filling up the boats so reservations are important.

We are at 4 Western Ave, Lower Kennebunk, Maine, 04043
Call us at 207.967.5507

Close Encounter

Nice footage of a close encounter with one of the Humpback whales. Video taped by Nicole, our resident Marine biologist on Nick's Chance.

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

Fireworks... Mother Nature's version

Well, Happy 4th of July everyone! At the moment (2pm) Mother Nature is providing a thunderstorm as her celebration to the 4th. Hopefully the thunderstorm will work it's way thru and we will have clear skies tonight to see the man-made fireworks on the boat. If you want to go you will need reservations so call.....

Yesterday the fog was on the ocean so we got skunked looking for whales, but we tried. Let get a good sun dance going with a blue sky accessory.....we need it!

None the less, we were back out on the water this morning looking for whales and the sighting were good with a couple of Finbacks and a Sei whales along with a pod of dolphins.......yea!!!!! So come on down and go out with us.

Interesting sighting in Australia

I thought I would past this website on to everyone. It is devoted to a white humpback whale named Migaloo. Which has been in the area of Queensland in Australia. I found it interesting.

The site is at http://www.migaloowhale.org/

It appears that the name Migaloo means "white fella" in the native language of the Australian Aboriginal's.

I wonder if it is raining in Australia? If not, I am going to see Migaloo.

Misty Monday

We had a brave bunch of hardy souls that went out in the rain today to go whale spotting. And the report back was they saw Sei whales , dolphins and a really close look at a Minke whale. So close that you could see the white "mittens". The crew like to call the Minkes whales, stinky minkes because it is hard to get a close look at them because they can be very boat shy. A Minke whale is about 35 feet long and likes to eat small fish like herring, capelin and krill.

When are you going to come out and look for the great white whale with us?

Stop by and see us the next time you are in Kennebunk, Maine.

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

Ramping up operations

The summer solistic is this weekend and the crew is ramping up operations at First Chance Whale Watch. We will be heading out on the water, if mother nature will cooperate with us, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 10am. Also the regular weekend schedule is still in effect. Saturdays at 10am and Sunday at noon. So join the whale paparazzi and see if you can see your favorite humpback. And for the kids the scenic lobster tour is a good way to get out on the ocean and let your children see how lobstering is done in Maine with Captain John. It is fun to watch the kids hold a live lobster, a simple joy in life for parents and crew.

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.

What are we doing this week!

So what does the crew during the time between trips? Well, we are out passing out all of our new 2009 Whale Watching and Scenic Lobster Tour brochures. We have cover almost all of the campgrounds, motels, hotels, bed and breakfast inns and a few variety stores in the Kennebunk and Kennebunkport area. Next we will be stopping at the Saco/Biddeford and the Wells/Ogunquit lodgings. If you think of an area that needs one of our pamphlets please let us know!

If you see in passing give us a shout!

The picture is of Red Nun 8 which is the first navigational buoy in the Kennebunk River after going thru the breakers.... remember the adage "Red Right Returning"

Talk to you later!

There she blows.....

Well "Nick Chance" had a great day sighting whales on Sunday May 24, 2009. On the first trip of the season we spotted a group of Humpback whales approximately 24 miles off the coast of Maine. The coorindates were 43'04''.13 by 070'08''.457. The location was Jeffries Ledge in the Gulf of Maine. We had about 7 to 8 whales and one was a calf with their mother a male escort whale. More will be dicussed in later blogs what a male escort whale does.


There was tremendous amount of cheering and clapping from the passengers of the boat when the first humpback lifted their tail in the air as he/she was diving. For the next 45 minutes we had many close encounters of the whales coming up to the boat.

So keep checking in with us on the latest status of whale sightings out of Kennebunk, Maine

The next schedule trip is on Saturday May 30 at 10am.

Hope to see you in the near future.

Ahoy for now!

Gearing up for the Season

Well the 2009 Whale Season season is upon us! "Nick's Chance" heads out into the Gulf of Maine look for the Humpback whales that are in the area filling their stomachs up with old fashion New England Seafood. The first cruise of the season starts tomorrow May 24, 2009!

This blog site will tell you of the whales that we are seeing on our Whale Boat called "Nick's Chance" based out of Kennebunk, Maine. Also we will keep you informed what is happening on the scenic Lobster Cruise Boat "Kylie's Chance".

We will tell you of the fun times and interesting questions that we get during the course of the season.

Hopefully clients that have gone out with us will get on the blog site and leave their comments and stories of what they experienced.

So let's get started.