At 4:00 P.M. the sailing boat Anthea arrived in Magdelana Bay after three long days and nights of sailing. My brother (Anson), my parents (Kim and Mark), and I (Devon, if you haven’t already figured it out), were all exhausted, but the call of, “Whales!”, soon brought me to the cockpit.

Anson and I raced up the ladder, stopping only to shrug on life jackets and get cameras. Once topside we looked around and were confronted with what seemed like constant whale spouts. Kim and Mark furled our jib and took down the main, letting the strong current take us farther towards land. As Anthea drifted we saw two whale watching pangas, with their passengers looking almost straight down. A minute later we realized they were looking at a whale! We saw the passengers reaching out, inches away from touching the mother and baby grey whales. Anthea was coming too close, so we unfurled a little bit of our jib and started to tack upwind. I went up to the foredeck to get a better look at the whales. Everyone was shouting, “Spout at 2:00!”, or, “fluke at 10:30!”, making us whip our heads around. After a moment of calmness, I shouted, “Whale, whale right there. Under our port bow!” Kim and Anson rushed up to see this 40 foot, several ton mass almost hitting our boat. The gray whale surfaced maybe ten feet away from us with a loud exhale! We were so close we could also here the inhale, something none of us had ever experienced before. A few minutes later we saw a spy-hopping whale. I shouted, “Look, whale! 4, no 5, no 5:30!” Everyone craned their necks and saw a spy-hopping Whale with the front ten feet of its face out of the water, falling back in.

By that time, it was 6:00 and time for dinner. We anchored on the west side of the anchorage, content, and settled down for the night.