Way OT - Close Encounter of the Whale Kind - Way OT but fun

[RobertKB]

Just got back from spending five weeks in Maui and as usual when I am there I love to do snorkel trips which usually include doing some whale watching also. Must be because I am a Pisces. Anyway, on the way back from a snorkel trip the boat I was on was befriended by one of the many humpback whales that spend the winter in Maui waters. It played, and I mean played, around the boat for a good half an hour. It spy hopped to look at us, splashed us with its pectoral fins, and its breath drifted across the boat with rainbows in the air. These huge creatures are incredibly agile and it literally came close enough for me to have been able to jump off the boat and land on it. I would have loved to have gone swimming with it!! I just love the ocean in Maui as it is so blue and warm enough that I can swim at length in it. Anyway, this whale encounter is one of those indelible moments that occasionally happen as we go through life.

[randroid]

Robert,

Welcome home, glad you had a good time.

While in college I went scuba diving around Puget Sound, and once had a Gray Whale swim over me about twenty feet above. When they swim their flukes move literally tons of water and you don't want to be in the water with them. I was wearing a tank and a 1\4" suit so I simply bounced off the rocks but a bigger whale could tie a person in a knot an never know it.

It was a bitchin' experience, though.

-Randy

[55 Fargo]

Very cool Robert, bout as close as I have ever been to Whales is at Sea World and Marineland. I think we have them here in Churchill Manitoba in Summer.....