This is a recording of humpback whales singing in a canyon whose walls bounce sound around like a concert hall. It seems that whales appreciate a venue with great acoustics too! Their operatic pyrotechnics are thrilling as they vibrate through my chilled dew-soaked body in the middle of the night floating on the Sea of Cortes. I’m back in Los Frailes this time in a different sailboat with a different captain. She’s a skipper who has been sailing her 45 ft Morgan ketch around the Sea of Cortes mostly solo for the past 4 years.
Actually we aren’t back in Los Frailes yet. It was our destination but that afternoon the boat’s diesel engine overheated and capitane Vicki shut her down immediately. We spend the day troubleshooting; replacing hoses, tightening screws and listening to every sound. As night creeps in Vicki declares work done for the day to be continued next morning. So we’re floating on the calm seas off the East Cape of Baja California Sur. Good time to drop the hydrophone. Whale voices rise up and envelope us. We are enthralled and calmed. “I’m turning in” Vicki heads down to the aft cabin. I find myself on night watch soaked, exhausted and in love with the undulating stars in the black sky.
Just above the eastern horizon Venus is bright. Orange Mars attends her on one side and dimmer Scorpio on the other. As I watch 2 shiny yellow spots emerge from the sea. They swell into horns and then become a bright bowl floating on the the water. It’s the crescent moon rising out of the ocean! The whales’ songs fade with the starlight as dawn brightens the sky.
When Vicki wakes up we discover that the engine shutdown was caused by flotsam and jetsam clogging up the raw water intake. It’s no big deal and a common problem.
After clearing the intake and hoses and tightening up the water maker belt which was making disturbing noises we get underway again and make it to Frailes to anchor and snooze. In the morning I take the kayak to paddle a surf landing on the beach and freedive along the NW shore. The constant wind and waves stir up the sandy bottom. Visibility is about 5 meters in the silty water. However it’s fun to follow a herd of parrot fish around in the surging surf.
We spend a couple of days in Frailes recovering our energy. scanning for whales and listening for whalesong. We see a few whales but not the busy nursery of Moms and calves that I had hoped to encounter. “let’s retrace our track to where we heard the whales and find them again” I suggest. We motor out along our track for a few hours but don’t hear anything. “I want to head back” Vicki says. I would like to stay and give it more time but it takes a lot of patience to be with whales. Mostly it’s long stretches of waiting. So we start to head north in the late afternoon. There’s a little bit of breeze. “I’m gonna raise up the main” Vicki says as she unties Rhiannon’s yellow sail cover. “I’ll leave the hydrophone down while we’re sailing” I say. We rig it off the stern and hear whalesong through my speaker. “I think it’s getting louder” I shout ” Is that a whale that just breached off our beam about 400meters?” We are sailing along Cabo Pulmo a couple of miles offshore as the sound amplifies. We zone out to healing sounds of whales singing and ocean waves washing over the hydrophone cable.
It sounds like the ocean is breathing.