Humpback of the month

On the back of some favourable weather we have actually been going out on the water! And the weather has been pretty darn spectacular, not warm though. The temperature ranged from -10°C to -17°C. Add in a very cold wind and you have some very numb fingers and toes.
But the skies were blue, the mountains were white and the sea was still. And there isn't much else you can ask for!

Or can you?

You can even ask for a humpback whale!! We had heard reports from a friendly captain the day before of a humpback whale at Hafnarfjörður (Hap-na-fyur-thur) which is a town adjacent to Reykjavik so we immediately set sail to that location!

We spotted a blow in the distance and headed in that direction. Then suddenly right by our boat the whale surfaced, both us and the whale were clearly startled and the whale dived immediately. But for the rest of the trip the whale was incredibly calm and cool around the boat, it was travelling very slowly and was happy to come right up to the boat. It was never overtly curious but never attempted to move away from us.
It would have been the perfect sighting, but it never once raised its fluke. This makes sense as it was swimming basically on the shore, the water was under 10 metres deep! It would only raise the fluke if it needed to dive deep and diving 5 metres doesn't qualify.

The Esjan mountains were look gorgeous in this weather!

The humpy took a dive just in front of Mount Keilir, which translates literally as cone mountain.

You can see just how close to land the whale was! Standing on the shore you would have gotten some incredible views of the whale!

Thanks for reading!