The Humpback whales beckon

We awoke this morning to the sound of whales. The sun was not up yet but there was enough light to see. The whales were about 1/3 of a mile away and were obviously talking to each other. I saw them blow twice and surface 3 times. On one occasion I saw the fluke of a whales tail. It was an incredible sight. Even more exciting  was the fact we were seeing them in the wild without a tour guide taking us to see them. It certainly made my week. It was very tempting to hop in the dingy and follow them as they disappeared behind the island but you are not supposed to approach them.  You are also not to get too close to them.  The humpback whales come here every year to the warmer waters from the polar waters to have their young and because there are lots of krill for them to eat here. As I waited for the whales to appear I watched the rays (about 1 foot across)swim over our anchor and anchor chain. 

As there was very little wind we decided to take the old screecher down and put the new one up. Once we were done we had to try the new sail out. It worked wonderfully. We moved to a new anchorage on Nuku Island that has a great sand beach and the snorkelling was great along the reef. We later went and visited a deep cave

that we could dingy right into. It had a hole in the top.

On our way back to No Regrets we stopped & visited with Chapter 2 and Tahawus and we were invited for happy hour.  We spent a few hours on the beach. I learned a new technique in the art of building sand castles. It is called drizzling the sand

Here with 2 different colours of sand the effect is quite dramatic. 

 Zeke made brownies and we motored over to Port Maurelle for Happy hour. We caught up on all of their adventures since we last saw them and when we were done we moved to Neiafu and took our favourite mooring ball near Kjell's place. 

If you go to 

Zekethesailor.net

And go to the bottom of the post you will see the faint picture of the whale.