Somehow I’ve become known as the Whale Lady amongst our sailing friends. OK, I’m not exactly a light weight, but it’s not because of that. It’s because I love the whales and dolphins we share the ocean with, and do a very short “Whale Watching” segment in the annual 2-hour briefing for the Quindalup Cruise which Fremantle Sailing Club organises each year from 26th December to early January.

So tonight I was up there again, having included whale watching sheets in the briefing notes for people to refer to. Rob had prepared a DVD of the blue whale at the start of David Attenborough’s “Blue Planet” that we’ve watched countless times. My message was that (for me, anyway) it’s a privilege to share the ocean with these magnificent creatures, so recording our sightings and passing them on to Western Whale Research to include in their database is the least we can do to ensure that they are around for our grandchildren to enjoy.

As usual, some people were really enthused and took the brochures I had ready.

Listening to the rest of the briefing I thought about the first time we’d attended a Quindalup briefing in 2001. We’d been really nervous about going that far south. Now, we were planning to attempt to get to Albany while the formal fleet sailed to Quindalup! And we were going to do it by ourselves. I hope we see some whales…