Position: 46 degrees, 26 minutes north; 148 degrees, 45 minutes west 131 nm day

We started motoring through the NW corner of the high yesterday early morning around 0300. After 27 hours we made it to the north side and are now sailing again with SW winds. So, we’ve turned the corner (the barometer has dropped 4 mb in the last 12 hours) and are headed east. We are going wing and wing in 15 to 20 knots.

Sailing toward the sunrise.

It’s not all “downhill” from here though. We’ve got a low pressure system to the north we need to avoid. It looks like it’s going to dissipate before getting to us, but it’s going to leave some “dumpy” weather in its wake including some adverse wind directions and maybe fog. Ugh. Oh well, welcome to passage-making. You take what you get and make the best of it.

At 0800 I stood up to have a look around for traffic and noticed a funny “slick” on the water. Hmmm. I continued to scan and sure enough a pod of whales was about. They were different from ones we have seen for these past years. They had a fairly tall dorsal fin with a curved back side, were very large, color was a mottled grey, size in the 25 plus foot range and most distinctively a very tall blow – looked like about 15 feet.

As I was considering the pod of six or seven, two headed toward Charisma. OK, this might get interesting and just as I said that to myself a huge one going really fast surfaced 10 yards off the starboard side. That got my attention! Another one came up on the other side and as I went down to get the camera, poof, they disappeared back to their pod. I had one last look at the pod about 200 yards behind us, then all dove and I didn’t see them again.

In looking them up in our whale book, I believe them to be a fairly rarely sighted species called the Sei Whale. The coloring, dorsal and “tall blow/spout” were all consistent and the kicker was that one of the listed habitats is the Pacific Gyre – which is exactly where we are.

Fun to see a rare species. I have never seen one like this before. At first I thought it was an Orca because it was so fast and sleek, (although the coloring was all wrong) but then looking at all the detail I realized it’s almost surely the Sei.

Fun.