Some nights sleep just doesn’t arrive. Last night was one of those, for both of us, despite 17,000-plus steps and a full day of sun. We toss and turn most of the night regardless, and we’re up early and in an Uber by 7.45, whale watching booked for the morning. The weather is doing us favours again, 21 degrees and bright, though Prince of Whales had warned us the water can run 10 to 12 degrees cooler than the land, so we bring jackets just in case. The Uber to Granville Island takes ten minutes, and we find the check-in counter, about 40 other passengers waiting alongside us before we board the twin-hulled boat for the day.
We leave the dock a little ahead of schedule, 8.20, and the temperature drops the moment we clear open water, wind and the occasional spray of salt finding us as the boat picks up speed. Captain Anthony has the helm, First Mate Luke beside him, naturalists Ashley, Sebastian, and Tamsin working the deck. We run northwest into the Strait of Georgia, Vancouver Island somewhere off to our west, the mainland to our east, working a loop of stops out toward the waters off Parksville and Nanaimo.
Four encounters through the day. Humpbacks first, individually known enough to have names, Niagara, a 2024 calf belonging to a whale called Hecate, one marked out as Dalmatian, and one that’s only ever made it to a catalogue number, CRC-22930. Then a raft of Steller sea lions mixed in with harbour seals, sunning themselves on White Island, ignoring us, despite the interest we’re giving them. Then orcas, the T023Ds, a Bigg’s killer whale family, Janice, Axle, Robin, Sixx, Wildside, and Mars all called out by the naturalists as they surface. And a last humpback encounter to close it out, Slice and Graze, feeding rather than just passing through.
With each encounter I stand on deck, hopeful, and mostly disappointed. My eyesight being what it is, “off the starboard bow, 3 o’clock, 700 metres” or “port side, 6 o’clock, 400 metres” means nothing useful to a man who struggles to see five metres off the back of the boat. What I don’t expect is the sound. Engine cut, boat bobbing, and then each whale breaking the surface with that exhale, a spray of water and breath that carries further than I’d have guessed. That’s the thing that makes it real for me, not the sighting, the sound.
Camera out the whole time, Insta360 running, hoping something usable comes out of it later. Luke describes one encounter in what turns out to be grotesque detail, an orca working a sea lion, and it’s no wonder great whites keep their distance from orcas. Young orcas learning their trade, young sea lions learning the cost of it. Heading back toward Vancouver we stop for two more humpbacks close to shore, still feeding, still making that same extraordinary sound as they surface and blow before diving again. Between encounters the crew fill in the gaps, the lives of orcas and humpbacks, and the long, grim history of whaling that nearly finished them off, hence the nod to Star Trek IV in the title, the one where Earth’s lack of whale song gets a visit from an alien probe and the crew of the Enterprise time travel to fetch a couple of humpbacks home. Let’s hope it never comes to that.
Back at Granville Island we thank the crew, disembark, and wander the market’s mix of artisan stalls and tourist shops before flagging a taxi back to the hotel for a rest. The afternoon takes us to Gastown again, more shop browsing, another milkshake and a cookie at a cafe we hadn’t tried, and a stop at the wool shop where Mardi discovers yesterday’s purchase never made it into her bag, the storekeeper having kept it aside on the chance she’d come back for it.
From there an Uber across to North Vancouver, a shopping centre with a jewellery store Mardi wanted to look at. Our driver is chatty the whole way, pointing things out through Stanley Park and across the bridge, telling us it was built by the Guinness family so their workers could reach the factories on the North Shore. He drops us at the entrance and we browse, Mardi finding the earrings she’d been after in stock, before heading back to the hotel.
Dinner is downstairs at the Shamrock Storehouse, the Irish pub attached to our own hotel, which makes for an easy night. Steak and Guinness pie for Mardi, while I enjoy nachos. A long, full day, and tomorrow’s bigger still, ten hours on the road to Whistler and Squamish.
