Papillon Photographs the Loch Ness Monster

Over the past 27 months living aboard Papillon, I’ve taken a lot of photos.  Many thousands.  The counter on my Fujifilm flipped back around to 0000 last summer.  And while I only own a little point-and-shoot, I’d like to think I’ve learned a little, and have taken a few decent photos in my day.

Sigh.

We are on our way down the east coast of the North Island, showing Erik’s parents the sights.  We’ve just been day sailing, but it has been a fun change for us to sail for a few hours at a time like normal people, instead of hauling up anchor and not putting it down again for at least ten days.

As we came around the tip of Cape Brett, we passed the Hole in the Rock, and the many, many tour boats that surround it.  And it was neat.

Yep, there's a hole in there, all right.

But when we passed the rock, we saw something jumping out of the water.  It was too big and too splashy to be a dolphin.  And it was surrounded by boats.

Ohmygoshitsawhale!

Now, lookit.  I’ve lived on this scrap of floating aluminum for years now, and we’ve put a lot of whaleless miles under the keel.  So you will forgive us if we on Papillon kind of lost our cool for a while there.  The other boats slowly left, and we sailed silently by.  The boat was rocking, but I’m the photography master now, right?  Well, not so much.  Because, while the actual experience of seeing a humpback whale calf smack its fins against the water and jump into the sky was really cool, my photos were ridiculous.  Most of my shots are of the jib or the rail.  The few whale pictures I managed are not only off-centre, but are so blurry as to be unrecognizable.  I could have been taking shots of an innertube in a backyard pool.  How bad was it?  Here are my two absolute best shots.

Humpback whale calf at play.  No, really.

You see that splash?  The breach that preceeded it was so cool, I'm telling you.

Yeah.

So, on we went to Whangamumu.  We dropped the anchor, the girls pulled on their wetsuits, and someone looked over the side.

Ohmygoshitsapenguin!

Holy cats, it's a penguin!

How dare you doubt the veracity of my crappy pictures?  It's a penguin, I say!

Yes, I know those shots are as bad as the whale ones.  But for serious and no lie, we had a penguin swimming around our boat.  Friends, the water is COLD here, and that’s a fact.  The girls invited me in with them, but I politely declined.  Where does cold water get fun?  It doesn’t. I prefer my blood to continue circulating to my extremities, thank you.

We’re in Mimiwhangata now.  No whales or penguins today, but who knows what will come next when we continue to Great Barrier Island?  And this time, I’ll try to keep it all in focus.