These photos do not give this experience justice- at all- not even close. I highly recommend this to everyone with or without kids. I can't believe I've never done this before. Whale watching may have to become an annual activity. Presley had a great time, Mark and I had a great time we all were wishing the trip didn't end so soon.
During the months of December and January the gray whale can be found in San Diego on their way to Mexico. Often they can be seen from land, but it truly is amazing to view from the water. We were on a sail boat and were able to get very close and sail along side this whale for 15 minutes.
Presley watched a movie, Big Miracle with Drew Barrymore on our road trip to NY last summer. It was a sweet movie and left Presley so enchanted by the sea and these lovable big creatures. I started my research thinking we were going to end up in Alaska in order to watch the whales. The good news was I always wanted to go to Alaska but the better news, they were coming through CA to Mexico.
I first googled whale watching and found huge ships that charge $50. a person. This sounded reasonable to me and I almost booked it. Next I wondered how good my photos would be on these big ships with hundreds of other tourists (with cameras). This is when I decided to google "whale watching, small tours" not to be confused with "small whale watching tours". It was then that I found, www.sailsandiego.com.
I called on my cell and asked a few questions. The woman who answered turned out to be the owner and she let me know their price was $85. per person. Their sail boats are 40 feet long and they take a max of 8 people out at a time. This sounded perfect to me, I was ready to book and tried to hang up because of a bad connection. She was so helpful she must of kept my on the line another 5 minutes, giving me directions on how to get there, where to park, asking about Presley (her age etc). I really appreciate great service and judging from that call I was pretty sure I'd like the sailing with them even if we didn't see any whales. She was careful not to promise we would see whales but she did say it would be highly unlikely if we didn't.
Ok the tour, it felt way too short! It was suppose to be 3 hours but we followed the whale for so long we ended up being on the tour for 3.5 hours. We saw a few whales in the distance and saw this one up close. Having the sail boat we were able to cut the motor and follow the whale for about 15 minutes. The whale never breached (coming fully out of the water). But the small glimpses we got were so thrilling. Even the captain who had done this for years was caught up in the excitement of the chase.
Presley was as excited about dolphins as she was about the gray whales. We had a few dolphins swim along side the boat, she was tickled by that... Just being in the open water on such a beautiful day felt like a gift to me. It was fun to have this time away, together with no distractions doing something we all enjoyed.
While on this trip I realized how hard it is to photograph sea life. They (whales or dolphins) don't come out of the water for long and trying to spot them, focus and hope the boat isn't shaking you was quite difficult. Composition wasn't something I could even think much about while out there. But I don't think I could ever leave my camera behind... There will always be hope I will get that one breath taking shot!...