It was a dark and stormy morning…. 

The thick clouds hung low and were dripping water up and down the coastline. Dressed appropriately for this gloom, we stayed reasonably dry and warm as we paddled into the gray drizzle on our weekly search for the southward bound migration of the California gray whales.

Over the past day or so, I had this strong recurring feeling bouncing around in my head this would be a memorable paddle.  However, that nice feeling was shattered when we encountered 3 fellow kayakers coming in to the La Jolla Boat Launch site just as we were preparing to launch.  They’d paddled out a few hours before we had, and returned without seeing any whales.  Damn!, I thought, there goes our perfect record this season – we’ve seen whales every time we’d gone out, but knew, as the season had reached it’s peak and was beginning to wind down, there was the chance of coming back empty handed.

As we moved through the small surf and steady rain, heading toward our secret whale sighting spot* off La Jolla, I revised my previous thoughts of a memorable paddle of ‘sunshine, breaching whales all around us, and half naked women on the beach’; to be a day of damp gray skies and no whales. Fortunately, no sooner had we arrived at our oceanic destination, than we spotted a whale in the distance heading our way. Now all we needed was a breach and a few naked women, and the day would indeed be memorable.

Well, we didn’t get any breaches or nudity, but after a few hours on the water, we stopped counting after 20+ whale sightings!!  A few came so close we could count the barnacles on their backs.

There is audio, so turn up the volume now.

Enjoy! 

*Directly off the high-rise condos at 939 Coast Blvd, at the very outer edge of the kelp bed, approximately 1 1/2 miles off shore, or a 2 1/2 mile paddle from La Jolla Shores.

Whales 1-29-15 movie