The sea and the wind had moderated as we approached the Brittany coast on our final morning at sea on the Saga Canaries Cruise. We were pleased to find the top deck was open again. We quickly started surveying. Unfortunately, we didn't see any Cetaceans and the Birds I saw were restricted to one Manx Shearwater, seven Little Gulls and a few Gannets, Kittiwakes and Razorbills.
By late morning, we hit a band of steady rain that continued for a couple of hours. At least that coincided with lunch, but it was still too heavy to go back on deck, until mid-afternoon.
As we couldn't go back on the deck, Chris and I were watching from the cabin balcony. I saw what looked like a carrier bag going by on the surface of the water. I always check these to see what sort of marine rubbish it is and there is always the hope it might be more interesting like a Jellyfish etc. In this case, it was a carrier bag sized Sunfish: bingo.
As we woke up on the final morning, the Spirit of Discovery was making its final manoeuvres into the dock at Portsmouth. We had sailed just over three thousand, nine hundred and fifty nautical miles. It wasn't long after breakfast, when we were told the gangplank was open for passengers to disembark. Chris and I needed to head off early, as I was dropping him at the station for an early train home. Fiona lives in Brittany, so she wasn't in a hurry to get off the ship, as her ferry to France wasn't departing from same terminal until that evening.
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Sadly, the seas had been against us for just about all of the cruise. We experiences seas of four to five metre swells for most of the trip which rose to six to seven metre swells after we left Madeira. The sea state was generally between five and seven and whenever it reached seven we had to stop surveying. Typically, there were twenty-five to forty knot winds and due to the wind strength and swell, the top decks were generally closed. On the first day at sea, all the decks were closed, apart from a brief window when deck 6 was opened to allow us to see our sister ship, the Spirit of Adventure. After that we were generally allowed to watch from the back of deck 10.
On some of the departures from the Canaries and Madeira, we managed to survey from the top deck and we were able to survey from there on the final day. In total, we only managed about twelve hours of surveying from the top deck. We often managed to survey from the back of deck 10, but this deck has too much of a restricted view to be considered as high quality survey data. But if that is the only deck we can survey from, it is better than nothing. In total, we recorded two Whale blows and about sixty Dolphins, many of which were Atlantic Spotted, along with a few Short-beaked Common Dolphins and the rest were unidentified. There were also two Sunfish. The totals were disappointing, but we had managed to get out surveying somewhere whenever we could and we had seen as much as the sea conditions allowed. With the top deck closed, we didn't get as much on deck passenger engagement as we normally do. But we did have a lot of lovely chats with passengers when we were inside the ship.
Due to the weather, we had spent extra days in the Spanish ports of Santander and Vigo and we had been unable to visit Cape Verde and Lisbon as planned. But we were told the extreme seas had severely affected shipping on both sides of the North Atlantic during our cruise. Saga did a brilliant job of replanning and laying on coach trips when we were in harbour. I would like to thank Saga for inviting the ORCA survey team onto the cruise and thank the crew for looking after us as well as they did. Finally, I would like to thank Chris & Fiona for being such pleasant surveying companions.
