“Groupon is offering a big discount on whale watching trips. I bought two for us. Should be great fun.”
Delighted by her find, Jackie called Channel Island’s Sportfishing in Oxnard to reserve space on next Sunday’s afternoon trip on the Ranger 85, a boat that accommodates about seventy passengers.
Her enthusiasm waned a bit when she was told that Groupon discounts couldn’t be used on weekends. But never one to back away from a challenge, she ponied up the extra bucks and got us tickets. No doubt envisioning a whale jumping into her lap, she excitedly counted the days until we’d board the Ranger.
Our last boat trip, in a larger vessel, took us from San Pedro to Catalina to celebrate 2021 New Year’s Eve. It was a rough trip. The wind blew, the boat rocked, water exploded over the bow, and I kept Jackie supplied with seasick bags. Never one to shun adversity in the face of a new adventure, the Catalina experience did not deter Jackie from wanting to seek out and make friends with the largest mammals on earth.
Many whales migrate along the California coast. Some like the Gray whale move from Mexico to the Bering Sea in the summer and reverse their journey in the winter. Others like the Humpback have much longer trips that keep them moving relentlessly, losing some of their body weight by postponing snacks until reaching their destination.
A female Humpback is about fifty feet long and, despite her fasting, weighs thirty tons. Males are smaller and, like me, tend to do what they are told. Gray whales are a little shorter and some spend the winter in protected areas of the Baja peninsula where a thriving business takes you right up to them for a gentle pat on their backs.
I did not want to spend another trip watching Jackie fill up seasick bags and suggested that we both share a scopolamine patch. That’s the medication that also makes you tell the truth, like the Germans used on Anthony Quayle in the 1961 movie The Guns of Navarone. Jackie was lukewarm about the idea, wanted to keep hiding some personal stuff, and grudging acceptance eventually degenerated until the idea of any med, even one available over the counter at Rite-Aid, was rejected without compromise. I prepared several dozen plastic bags.
Having fished on party boats coming out of Channel Islands, I’ve learned that the weather offshore can be colder than inshore. Accordingly, my mother’s mantra about dressing warmly leaped at me, “You can always take off what you’ve got on, but you can’t put on what you don’t have.” And she had never fished.
Sunday morning arrived in Ojai, bright and sunny. A fooler, I thought. For sure it’s going to be cold on the ocean. The incessant wind will bring the temperature down to the vicinity of that experienced by Robert Peary when he stumbled onto the North Pole. I thought, we’ll probably see more icebergs than whales. Don’t let Jackie out of the house unless she dresses like my mother.
She emerged from the bedroom wearing an armless jacket; the one that looks like it’s made of squares filled with a quarter inch of insulation. It always reminds me of the coats that the Chinese wore in Korea when we were beating each other to death.
I stared at her sockless feet. I suggested that she wear mukluks, two wool shirts, and a warm hat with earflaps. I repeated my mother’s mantra…twice. No movement.
You’re gonna be cold, I said.
I’ll be fine, she said.
No, you’re not, I said.
I’ll be fine, she said.
I’m not sharing my clothes with you on the boat, I said.
I’ll be fine, she said.
Two “I’ll be fines” always means, “Leave me alone”.
So I did.
We arrived at the dock. People were in various stages of dress. The ones with the proper clothing had probably heard my mother’s mantra. The others, dressed like people on Easter break in Miami Beach, had either never heard my mother’s mantra or were too macho to put on anything more than flip-flops; they could be easily identified along with Jackie who sought a warm spot inside the building. I half-expected to find pictures of them frozen and hanging alongside the photos of trophy fish that anglers had caught years ago.
We boarded the Ranger with forty others and immediately noted that there were only eight sheltered seats inside the boat’s galley. But that didn’t matter much since the whales were outside the boat. They were waiting to display their spouting, breaching, and other tricks they had learned to entertain underdressed, freezing humans, and to take revenge on the people who had killed Moby Dick and his relatives.
Jackie put up a good front, shooing me away every time I said, are you cold?
I’m not sure why I did that. I certainly wasn’t going to give her one of my four layers of clothing or my wool hat. Maybe I was just getting even by pointing out her disdain for my mother’s mantra.
My pity eventually overwhelmed my taste for revenge. I held her hand, nestled up to her and blocked the wind. I stopped asking if she was cold.
We went inside. All the seats were occupied by people wearing flip-flops. They were drinking large mugs of hot chocolate laced with Jameson’s Irish Whiskey.
I was sure I was the oldest person on the boat, so I just stood there looking pathetic and sorely in need of a place to rest my bones.
A young couple who probably wished they were in Miami Beach stood and gave us their seats. I grunted, stumbled theatrically onto the seat, and thanked them for their kindness.
Every few minutes noises on deck could be heard announcing the spotting of another whale, all too far away to properly enjoy the massive creature. We decided to end our day sitting in the warmth of the cabin.
We had seen several whales, but only parts of them. Backs were plentiful and two tails. For all we knew, it could have been the same whale repeating her performance. Or a whale without a head.
I wondered how these animals could bear the cold pacific water and chilled wind. And then I thought…maybe they know my mother’s mantra.
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