Trifecta! Orcas T46's outside Friday Harbor, a Humpback BCY0409, and a minke

June 29, 2020 – “I saw something go down! Looked like an orca fin!”. It started out like a normal day leaving Friday Harbor to pass the University Marine Labs and follow the coastline North. But today we were immediately in for a surprise. I’d shut down the engine and waited in anticipation. Orcas surfaced and cartwheeled, dorsal fin slapped, tail lobbed and they were rounding the point into Friday Harbor. Barbara immediately recognized the dorsal fin of T46E. The matriarch T46 was born ~1964 and she was traveling with 4 of her 6 offspring (including T122 probable daughter). T46D was back with the family.

They checked out the harbor and followed the coastline South. Hunting a couple of times in Griffin Bay it was clear they were successful and shared a meal. Interestingly T46D continued on his own as the rest of family hunted. We caught a nice breeze to tack close hauled towards Jakles Lagoon. We met the Orcas again as we came through Cattle Pass and T46D began traveling parallel with 1/2 mile or so separation. They built up speed pushing towards Hein Bank.

We left them to come in to Salmon Bank keeping a lookout for Minke whales. Finding none we hugged the shoreline near the lighthouse to find back eddies in the strong current and come back through the pass. Humpback whale BCY0409 ‘Yogi” was comming down the channel. We sailed back out through Cattle Pass to watch the whale pass the lighthouse.

This time I used the back eddys near Deadman Island to navigate back through the pass. We were surprised by a Minke whale lunging where the currents converged. Finding a place in the currents to hold position we watched as the Minke circled using the back eddy to the junction with the main ebb current, zooming down channel and then circling around again. Our passengers named the whale “Mortimer” the minke.

We followed the Lopez shoreline wing on wing shifting to a very fast beam reach at 7.7 knots over water bringing us into the pass of Turn Island. The late afternoon light was magical and winds really picked up nearing Friday Harbor keeping us on our toes as we dropped sails in the lee of Brown Island.