Alaska Cruise, Part Two - Victoria

Our first port was Victoria, the capital of British Columbia.  Labor Day is a Canadian holiday as well as American, and they were having a wooden boat festival.   We arrived just as they were starting the boat parade.  (Edit:  click on the pictures to biggify.)

And, look!  A boat and a flying thing!

I signed up for a whale watch excursion, and the bus was at the dock to take us to the boat.

There was an option for a whale watch out of Juneau, but the Washington / Vancouver area is famous for Orcas (killer whales) and I really wanted to see one.  The skipper located a family of four; mother, father, older daughter and youngster born earlier this year.  In the photos, the one with the Very Large Dorsal Fin is the dad.  The dorsal fin can be six feet high on mature males.  The dorsals of females and young males are more like two or three feet high.  That large dorsal gave me enough time to get the pictures.  That and the sport setting on the camera that will take eight rapid photos at a rate of three in two seconds.

I had read that some scientists are worried the whale watching activity is reducing survival of young orcas.  I’d been on whale watches off the coast of Maine and usually there were only two boats, so I didn’t understand the concern until this trip.  These whales are much closer to shore and have a herd of boats following.

There’s a coast guard boat in the group, although not in the picture.  About half the herd is not in this picture!  The law is vessels must stay at least 300 meters from the whales.  If they surface by your boat, you have to cut the engine immediately and drift until they’re more than 300 meters away.  The fine is $10,000 to the skipper of a private boat.  For the commercial ones, it’s $10,000 to the skipper AND $10,000 to the company.  While we were there, the coast guard pulled over one of the private boats. 

Here’s another shot of the orcas.

The individual can be identified by the shape of the white patch on their back just behind the dorsal fin.  This is a group of transient orcas.  The transients hunt seals and other marine mammals and are the reason these whales are called the wolves of the sea.  The resident orca pods hunt fish, primarily salmon this time of year.  We didn’t see any of them. 

The skipper took our boat over near some rocks. 

The light brownish blobs are seals.  They were on high alert.  We drifted for a while, watching.  Occasionally they see an orca leap out and pull a seal off the rocks.  That didn’t happen, so we headed back to Victoria. 

Here’s the Sea Princess again. 

On the way to the dock, we passed these house boats.

Once back at the Princess dock, I took a shuttle into Victoria.  I didn’t have as much time as I’d hoped.  Enough time to pick up some t-shirts, and encounter an unexpected resident. 

Sulley from Monsters, Inc is Canadian?  Who knew?

The weather was probably great for potentially seeing the green flash, but I was inside chatting with someone I met on the whale watch and missed the sunset.  I did get to see the full moon, though.  The seas were running around 8 feet again, and my photo attempts all failed miserably. Long exposure time and moving platform means blurry, multi-moon shots.

It was beautiful.  Really.  

Day four was an at sea day, and there was a sushi buffet in the Horizon court.

Not great sushi - I will admit I am a total sushi snob - but they had tuna and salmon and California rolls.  ;-) 

It’s true they feed you a lot on cruise ships, and the food was really good.  I signed up for ‘anytime dining’ which covered lunch and dinner in the dining room.  I could show up whenever I wanted, and sat with whoever else showed up then.  They always served multi-course meals.  Soup, salads, appetizers, main dish, dessert.  I ate lunch there once, and dinner four or five times.  The rest of the time I ate in the Horizon Court, a buffet on Deck 14.  There were great selections, and I had more control over the portion sizes.  Also, they had small desserts!