Whale Watching,July 18

I had just bragged about the nice sunny warm days we have been having and yesterday,Friday,we happened to get an overcast day with rain in the evening. We decided to keep our plans for taking a whale watching cruise. We left early in the morning with high hopes that the weather would clear. Even the captain of the boat felt fairly confident the the cloudiness would lift when we got further out to sea. Unfortunately he was wrong,the visibility never improved. According to the crew when a whale spouts(which is his exhalation as he come up to the top)it is about twenty feet high and that is one way to spot where they are located. That is not possible to see when there is poor visibility. One minke whale was seen- which I missed. A couple of the crew mates were naturalists and did point out to us laughing gulls,terns,stormy petrols and other ocean birds. We did also see harbor seals and porpoises. The captain sure tried hard to find the whales;he went to all their feeding shelves,covering one hundred of miles in the process. The captain kept telling us to keep looking out over the ocean 360 degrees. I did get tired of that,especially when I kept getting fooled by "wake whales"(a series of wakes from the ship would produce such fake sightings). The water was also a bit rough-the crew said that a fairly strong wind last night produced the high waves today. Still,they claimed that the roughness of the ride was pretty average! Despite everything,however,we still found it an interesting trip out on the ocean. Today,Saturday,was the last day of the reunion. After saying our good-byes to everyone John and I, also my brother Wayne and his wife, headed northwest to Jack Maine. From their we plan to enter Canada.