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Signs of Life

Nancy L. Horner

Why I Froze My Ass To See a Whale Take a Breath

“It’s supposed to be cold out there?” I asked my husband, David.

“Down to the forties once we’re outside the harbor. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

As my family stood under noontime rays, waiting for a whale-watching tour boat to return from its latest cruise in the Atlantic, I found it difficult to imagine that we were going to get chilly enough for the piles of coats we had in tow, much less the extra fleece pullover that my eldest had talked me into buying because he was certain that he was going to turn into an icicle. We were in Maine and Maine is, in general, cold by comparison with our Mississippi home. But, it was an unseasonably warm day in Bar Harbor. Standing in direct sunlight with over a hundred other bodies crammed behind the fenced waiting area made the warmth feel even more intense.

“They said it’s a little choppy and we could expect five-foot swells,” he added, “maybe more.”

I tried, unsuccessfully, to imagine what a tour boat would feel like on a five-foot swell. All I could come up with was, “That could be interesting.”

David informed me that the whale-watching company guaranteed a sighting, so the tour boat would stay on the water for whatever length of time they required to locate a whale. Apparently, the tour ahead of us took extra time to find its whale. Around forty-five minutes after the boat was scheduled to leave with our batch of passengers on-board it lumbered into harbor, disgorging a weary-looking batch of tourists

“Oh, look how they’re dressed,” someone nearby observed. “It must be pretty cold out there.”

The vast majority of the passengers were either wearing hats and thick sweatshirts or coats. Some even had gloves on. Considering the fact that people had been stripping off layers nearby and rivulets of sweat were trickling down my back, it was especially difficult to imagine that we’d need to bundle up so thickly.

As soon as we left the protected harbor, I understood why the previous boatload of passengers looked exhausted and had been dressed for cold. Buffeted by wind coming off the frigid Atlantic Ocean, the cruiser was rocking so dramatically that we had to hold on tightly to our seats whilst looping camera-case handles around our ankles to keep them from sliding away. And, boy was it cold. For the first five minutes after passing the last stretch of land, we tried to tough out the icy air; but, then we quickly donned our layers of sweatshirts and coats, for all the good they accomplished. The stiff wind seemed to slice right through us, coats and all.

The location at which the captain intended to stop, in the hopes that whales would drop by to greet us, was a good thirty minutes away from the harbor. About twenty minutes into the trip, 19-year-old Daniel grabbed hold of the railings and wobbled down the staircase, returning shortly with a cup of hot chocolate and a cardboard bowl. I don’t know how he managed to stay upright. “Chili dog?” he shouted over wind, motor, and the slap of boat against waves, thrusting the carton toward us.

David looked askance at him. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he hollered back.

“It’s a line from One Crazy Summer,” Daniel yelled. “I just had to do it.”

Amazingly, this same teenager had told us his stomach was queasy before we even left the dock. We watched in awe as he wolfed down the hot dog. Weird.

The whales, as luck would have it, were not cooperating. We managed to see a few spouts of water or “blows,” a couple of seals, and the lumpy back of one finback whale. But, a nearby crew member informed us that visible whales were usually more numerous and sometimes even came up to the boat to scratch their backs against the hull.

Nobody in my family seemed to care just how much whale they managed to spot, whether a puff of condensed whale breath or a glimpse of backside. The kids were whooping with joy, loving every minute of being bucked around. Maybe a two-hour rollercoaster ride was what they really needed. David was placidly frozen, and I was simply determined to have fun. Surprisingly, I didn’t really mind tempting hypothermia in order to do so. How often, after all, do you manage even a glimpse of a creature as marvelous as a whale?