Do you speak whale?

Down in the galley making tuna mayo sandwiches, sweating profusely and trying to angle my dripping forehead into the fan for some relief– I hear an excited yell from Dylan who was in the cockpit. Thinking he may be showing me my 200^th flying fish which still seem to fascinate him – I begrudgingly put down the knife and headed for the companionway.

Putting my foot on the first rung of the ladder, I realise that this may be more than the humble flying fish he is looking at as when I catch his expression, he looks like he has almost peed his pants.

Following his gaze towards Martinique coastline, not more than 400 metres from our starboard quarter is a humongous whale shooting out of the sea like a missile emerging from its underground silo. The gnarled white fins clearly visible in the midday sun, the pod of humpback whales continued to give us a fantastic display of acrobatics as a further 2 more whales breached the surface, each one going higher than the previous.

Quite overwhelmed with this fairly rare natural occurrence taking place right before our eyes, we were speechless. After the fourth breach I rushed down to get the camera, eager to take a video. Unfortunately that was enough for today, the whales didn't resurface except for the occasional spouting of water we could spot in the distance.

Luckily I have a photographic memory so shall be replaying that experience over and over again in my head for years to come. Having seen killer whales in San Juan islands and now the humpback whale in the Caribbean, we are keen to see the blue whales to complete the collection!