Around the bend

So, around the bend, it was flat seas and not a whisper of breeze.
We called Old Perkie into action and were grateful, once again, for the Iron Wind.
-I would like to take a moment to pay homage here...
To the patron saint of diesel engines ( I think that constituency belongs to St. Jude,  faithful guardian of sailor's... and the mentally insane).
"thank you, oh thank you, for every time we fire her up, successfully.
We rejoice in an instant rumble and a steady RPM.
Amen".
Sorry. I have to give in to these intuitions, sailors are superstitious.
Anyway....
It was SPECTACULAR weather.
Clear as a bell and dead calm. Perfect for whale-watching...and boy, oh boy did we get a show.
I think I mentioned, in another post, that we have been fortunate to see whales on almost every leg of our journey. Let me rephrase...We have been BLESSED.
This particular passage, brought the most amazing viewing so far, we saw at least 20 humpbacks. These, we guessed, were males, mostly, because there was a great deal of tail-fluke slapping and breaching.
Incidentally, the "guessing" thing has become sort of art-form and a large part of our lives these days. When you no longer have internet, or 3G, you can't run to Wikipedia, every ten seconds, like it's your virtual Mommy, so you do a lot of guessing.
We like to call it...WONDERING.
"I wonder if that's a male..."
"I wonder, is that what they do when they're feeling aggressive?"
"I wonder if our SSB actually does work, or are we just idiots and can't tune it yet..."
"I wonder what's around the next point..."
We pool our knowledge of basic facts and then do our best to amalgamate it into some semblance of an answer and then, we simply sit back and watch in...WONDER.
As it turns out, not knowing everything about everything does not actually lessen the experience. In fact, it does the opposite. Hours spent on the foredeck, witnessing whales busy breaching and blowing and doing headstands with their tales floating above a flat and windless sea...who knows what they are really up to. Who cares?  I mean, what are WE doing out here? Two actors, with nothing but a great boat and a couple of great kids and a few plastic credit cards doing, floating around in the gulf of California? I challenge science to explain it.

It's fun. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Looks like a male to me