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American Spirit II - Day 219; A Slow Day in Cairns, Australia; Tuesday, August 12, 2014



I went to a whale watch tour company and was able to get their 'whale watch fact brochure' which describes whale behavior; the size of different sex and types of humpback whale behaviors; their physiology; and whale songs. Humpback whales grow can grow 12-16 meters (39-53 feet) and weigh up to 40,000 kilo's (88,000 pounds). That's almost 5 times heavier than our boat.

Whales exhibit a number of surface behaviors which are either 'relaxed'; 'social/interactive'; or 'aggressive/threatened.' Relaxed behaviors include blow, pectoral slap and the fluke up dive. The latter behavior, the fluke up dive, is what the whale did behind the boat a few days ago. Social/interactive behaviors include the breach and spy hop. And the aggressive/threatened behaviors include the Peduncle arch, tail slap and head lunge.

There are currently estimated to be 12,000-15,000 humpback whales that visit the Australian waters, and up to 80,000 worldwide. Over 200,000 Humpback Whales were slaughtered during the 'age of whaling.' What a tragedy. New Bedford and surrounding towns at once point had almost 800 whaling ships, which would be gone for up to 3-5 years on whaling 'expeditions.' Crew were given 'shares' of profits, meaning that after 3 years if a ship was not productive enough, the crew might get nothing other than room and board.

Slept in today, up at 9:00 AM. Closed the hatch covers in aft cabin so it was really dark. Sunrise doesn't wake me up when I do that.

Breakfast consisted of a mushroom and onion omelet made by Jeanine, along with cut up potato and raisin bread.

Around 11:30 AM Russ and Laurie from Nexus showed up at our boat. They were in Port Douglas 40 miles away and had rented a car and driven down to check out Cairns.

Jeanine and I left for the Woolworth's grocery store at 1:40 PM. It was about 1/2 mile away. We bought everything we needed for the boat, to take us all the way to Darwin without stopping, if necessary. Except we still needed to get some beer. We were back at the boat by 3:00 PM or so. Carrying the grocery bags was a struggle for me as I had one bag too many to carry. I had to stop every 50 yards of so and switch hands.

The Ray Marine repair person, who was supposed to show up at the boat around noon, showed up at 4:05 PM. He left an hour later.

We started our 'walkabout' at 5:30 PM. We were going out to explore Cairns on foot and have dinner along the way. We found a casino in town and had a relatively cheap dinner at it. Jeanine tried her luck at 'Wheel of Reels', or something like that, and after being up 100% ended up losing all of her money. A whole $5.00. Last of the big time spenders.

We were back on the boat by 9:30 PM and watched a British movie called 'Age of Heroes.' OK war movie about a raid into Norway by British commandos.

I took a shower at 11:50 PM up at the dock; and then went thru and organized some charts for tomorrow's departure. Not sure yet whether we'll have a short day with a hop to Port Douglas; or an overnighter to Lizard Island. Depends on the weather, which has forecast of rain and high winds for Thursday and Friday.

Brian Fox



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