14 maart 2025
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Tres Hombres

A Whale of a Day (Giulia, Cookie)

It’s Sunday on the good ship Tres Hombres. We are somewhere North East of the Dominican Republic, our crossing home bound started a few days ago. The weather is fair, the sailing feels like something new, something we haven’t experienced yet during this whole journey since we left Den Helder in December: we glide softly with full sails out at 3 knots of speed on a seemingly flat sea, the ocean swell is so long, smooth and gentle that we can only barely perceive it. The ship is still while moving forward. We go slow, but in the good direction. It’s hard to complain.


As custom and tradition, on Sundays the crew wear their fancy and funkiest clean clothes and takes a day off maintenance duties and indulge into hard chilling, whatever it may mean for each crew member: who swings lousily on the hammock, who reads a book, who washes body and laundry, who takes a nap on deck while off watch. We take full advantage and enjoyment from every drop of such weather, before the passage to Horta becomes more challenging in weather, conditions and temperatures. It’s March and we are crossing the North Atlantic, we all know that such blessed warm days are counted. Better soak in every degree that we can now and let our skin enjoy the sweat of the tropical sun before wrapping them into thick plastic and the many layers we stowed away an ocean ago.


Our outer world is perfectly split into two shades of blue. The sun covers the ocean with sparkling, raw and chunky diamonds and our skin sweats under its power. Life is pretty sweet! At lunch we eat Spanish tortillas de papas, Italian bruschette di pomodoro, Mexican guacamole, Caribbean homemade hot sauce, caramelized onions and I pull out a couple of chorizo sausages from our time in Galicia. Me and Nick casually chat about whilst looking at this glittering flat ocean: we discuss about how little wildlife sightings we had during the trip, compare it to previous ones we did, and wonder if the reason is bad luck, poor timing or that the oceans are really getting emptier and emptier…

After lunch, I’m laying in the shade on the galley roof, which at times I turn into a tattoo shop. I just hand poked an anchor on Ziggy’s thumb and I lounge with my book, I’m fully into reading Paul Watson’s “In the name of the Sea” when Nick reaches up to me handing over the binoculars and telling me with a confident and gentle smile “There she blows…”. I can’t fully grasp what he said and I stare back at him slightly confused when he enforces “WHALE! At the bow! Ten o’clock, portside”.


It has been a long time since the last time someone warned the crew there was a whale in sight. It was off the coast of Northern Spain, when we left Galicia, in late December. Back then it was a big male Minke (Balenoptera acutorostrata) crossing our bow and checking casually on us. It was dawn, visibility was poor, it was nice but we couldn’t fully appreciate its presence. This time will be different.

I waste no time no more and I glue my eyes to the horizon, holding my breath. The crew gathers on the foredeck too. I can’t see much so I quickly climb on the shrouds to go sitting on the course yard and improve my angle but the head sails hide half the view. I don’t dare to venture myself more aloft as I’m not wearing my harness so I get back on deck and decide to risk missing something and go to fetch it, as fast as I can. Once I have it in my hands and I try to wear it clumsily as my attention and focus are on the water, I first see it: the humpback whale fluke, my favourite shape in the whole world, staggering against the blue horizon just there in front of us. Slow and gentle, so graceful and elegant, shining while arising from the water and reflecting the sunrays on its varnish-black thick skin. My eyes fill with awe and my heart with gratitude. I would already be happy and satisfied with such a vision, and I’m by far not ready for what is coming…


I reach the furthermost tip of the bowsprit as spouts begin to appear a bit everywhere around us. One can hear voices calling all hours of the clock on both sides of the ship in a matter of a few seconds’ wait. We soon understand that we are entering their playground, we are surrounded by humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) till eyes can see! There were possibly twentyish of them, not less, maybe more, gathered around the Silver and Navidad Banks, two shallow patches where the sea floor rises from 3000 mt to 20 in a handful of miles, located some 35 nm NE of La Hispaniola. Ideal grounds as here the plankton and krill they feed on is abundant and attracts these majestic creatures who come to feed, breed, and play. And the wind in our sails brought us here too! What a gift!


None of us, besides Bedi a Turkish trainee who works as officer on crude oil tankers sailing all the seven seas (yes, you’ll find also such folks joining along as trainees on Tres Hombres!), has never seen such a thing: spouts, flippers, breeches, flukes, dorsal fins, they are everywhere! It’s an all-you-can-wish whale show! Everyone’s eyes are wide open like if they wanted to embrace the whole ocean in one look. For some of my buddies here it is the first time seeing a whale out of a screen, I can hear their ooohs and wows and it fills me with joy. Standing there with my bare feet on the bowsprit and the breeze in my face, I find myself in complete awe, my heart flooded with gratitude whilst I feel sweet tears caressing my cheeks, which hurt from the size of the smile I’m throwing to the world.


We are not too close to be bothering them, not too far to only guess what it is and let imagination fill in the dots. We are cruising at a speed of 2/3 knots, sliding quietly on this infinite blue silky canvas. We can’t get closer, engineless as we are, and even if, would we attempt? Would we dare? I think, hope, guess, not. Not out of fear, but of respect. I take lots of pleasure knowing we are just co-existing on this stretch of water with them and we are creating a minimal disturbance. No underwater engine sounds interfering with their communications, any propeller is spinning generating ugly noises and dangerous threats. Just with our humble presence from afar, passing by, leaving no trace on them.


From our nutshell, we can of course be witnesses only of their surface activities but imagination runs wild and my thoughts dive deep down with them, picturing their swirling dances, longing for hearing their chants underwater…


At some point the louder sound of a spout brings me back to the surface and there a whale is! Maybe coming closer to check on us and report to all the others in case something was wrong? With the proximity, we could appreciate the shape of the body even better while it surfaces a few times before taking one last breath and diving down showing its beautiful fluke. A chorus of Oooohs of marvel and respect, somehow made quieter by the closeness, greeted the visit.


You might think that this was it. We thought that too. But far from it! Spectacular breeches could be still observed, flippers waving, splashing on the water, flukes rising and diving… I was particularly amazed by the elegance and the grace of their breeches. And the height of the splashes! An adult Humpback measures up to 15 (male) and 16 (female) mt long and can weigh up to several tons. They aren’t particularly fast swimmers but they can get enough momentum to propel their whole body mass out of the water in a 360 degrees flip! A bit like watching live the golden medal of artistic swim at the Olympics, but hundreds times better, because it is wild, and in the open Big Blue. Their movements are graceful and feel almost lazy at times, especially when waving their white sleek flippers (they can reach up to a third of the body length), like if someone is casually swimming on its back taking all the time of the world to do so. Why speed up, after all? Time means nothing in Whale World, I guess. Running after it, even less, I’m sure.


I’m doing my best but I find it very hard to describe. What it was, how it felt. It would be hard even to pick a favourite highlight moment out of this fortunate, generous encounter. Probably the vertical breach of one of them, its body launched towards the sky like a rocket, staggering against the horizon, going up and up and up showing more and more of its body, when finally released all the tension to the side and abandoned itself to gravity falling back into the ocean in a slow motion dive. Or the appearing and gently disappearing fluke in the golden, glittering wake of the setting sun. Or the overlapped show of breech, waving, spouting and diving all in the same spot at the same time in a very short distance one from another. Can’t choose, and why would I.


After an hour and half of whale watching, some of us went back to do their things, satisfied with the visions. I couldn’t get enough but dinner had to be prepared! I rushed to the galley, luckily I had a plan, and chickpeas were soaking for hours already. I quickly peel and chop the onions, splash the pot with oil and put in the fastest stew I’ve ever made. Lid on, the stove will do the rest. Then I reach for my harness again and join my husband Jules on the royal yard. The sun is about to dive into the ocean too when we hear the crew below screaming “Green Flaaaash!” but from the top of the mast we can still see a good slice of the Sun above the horizon. No green flash for us but another half an hour of breeches till the last white flipper waves goodbye on the darkening blue ocean as we take distance from the area of their gathering, leaving it in our wake. We remain up there a little longer with our legs dangling down along the royal, literally speechless, feeling blessed and infinitely richer. The ship looks even more tiny from high above in all this Blue. We are humbled and grateful beyond words. Two and more hours have passed since Nick called for whales the first time. There has not been a dull moment since on the waters around us. Thanks to the wise old whales, we learned once again the preciousness of being alive, the privilege of sharing this Blue Planet with creatures capable of making us cry of awe and gratitude.

As night falls, I can’t avoid indulging in some questions and reflections though…
How can it be that still nowadays in 2025 in many parts of the oceans we allow the mass slaughter of these whales and their cetaceans and marine mammals kin? How!? How can one see them and think at first “Money!” or “Food!” or whatever other resource, while Nature already provides so bountifully? How can one’s heart be so dry and poor not to feel impressed, inspired, humbled, touched in a way or another, by such creatures, with whom we share so much more than we could possibly imagine? However on Earth can we still allow these totally harmless and inoffensive, beautiful and majestic creatures to be hunted down and butchered to the edge of extinction? How can we persecute as ecoterrorists those who take real action to protect them and leave run free and unpunished the slaughterers? How can we provide unlimited governmental funds for exploring space, Mars and install Life on such a crappy planet, and let the organizations and people who take good and concrete care of our beautiful one run mostly on random donations?


In the past, we turned them into oil to light up lamps and shine a light in the darkest nights, but these massacres cast a gloomy shadow of shame and guilt on humanity. It is time to change, it is time for redemption. But nowadays, we still butcher and slice them to fit them into tins and sell them in stores like cat food. Please help me to find the sense in this madness. Can you, honestly?


It makes me laugh to think that we are so pretentious and oblivious to say that when someone acts nicely to someone/thing else, that makes proof of empathy and therefore it is considered as “human”. Nothing more far from reality! We are so cruel, to one another, and to basically all the species on Earth!


It makes me puzzled to imagine how many of my kin humans claim to belong to a superior species who has supreme rights above all and everything else on this planet, while many cetaceans like whales have built-in systems which allow them to communicate within great ocean distances without any of the faff we take to do more or less equal. In order to do pretty much the same they do while chanting, we conceived, invented and created systems and supply chains that are highly disruptive both for the environment we call Home (and allow us not only to survive, but to thrive), and for our fellow kin humans, based mostly on exploitation, pollution, and abuse. Well done, Man! How smart, indeed!


The bittersweet taste of the unbalanced, sick, totally fucked up relationship that we installed since a long time between us, Humanity, and our fellow marine mammals is stinging and hurting and making me nauseous and fills my heart with rage and sadness for the many injustices and sufferings we inflicted and do still inflict to them and to all the other creatures who have the bad luck to share their home with our kind.


Luckily, we ain’t all the same and many of us are still very capable to feel the inner Connection. The supreme Empathy is not totally extinct within Humanity. The exquisite Web of sacred relations which keeps us all alive still stands, no matter how hard we try to fool ourselves and each other that we are NOT interdependent. There are many Humans out there who would devote and even give their lives, literally, to protect a whale, a coral reef or a tree. Praises and prayers for them.


Let’s finally imagine the Planet as a neighborhood. Our very own little one, the one we have been born and raised in, the one we will die in. There are many actions, little and greater, more or less radical, which can be taken, everyday, according to our condition, to stop being the biggest, fattest, most fucked up assholes of the block. So let’s goooo, let’s try, let’s do it, for fluke sake! Let’s be more whale and less human.

Stay wild, fellas.
Cheers,
Giulia.

In loving memory of all the already extinct creatures and species that used to inhabit our shared Home.

 

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