The boat pulled out on time, and we motored out of the harbour, passing a castle on the shore that once belonged to the Moonies. Once past the break water we sped up, but the water remained fairly calm. Monica and I passed the 1.5 hour trip out to the feeding ground in idle chatter, watching a toddler make the rounds of the ship on her father's leash. The older kids banded together in a pack and blithely disregarded the warnings against running. Once we hit the bank, an announcement was made that a whale had been sighted 20 mins further along, so we headed up there and caught up to the other boats harassing the humpback. It was exciting spotting the blow as the whale surfaced, and we saw it's tail a few times as it went down for deeper dives. It did look remarkably serpent like as it was curving down into the depths, only it's hump marring the sleek back before the flukes broke the surface. It came up a few times and we would idle until the blow was spotted again, 7 or 8 minutes later. We had to leave it when our time ran out, to head back to the harbour. I saw another blow on our way back, but we didn't have time to watch that whale, one the naturalist on board suggested might be a Minke due to the smaller spout.
The motor back to Gloucester was long, about 2 hours, and we just sat in the sun and watched the clouds roll in and the sun go down, docking at around 7pm. Despite grabbing snacks during the ride, we were all set for dinner, so we left the car and walked over a street and along it until we found a pub that was open. We split an appetiser of mussels, which were quite good but not quite up to the level of the spicy mussels at the Thirsty Scholar in Somerville. I had the halibut in lemon sauce and it was divine. We went back to the car via the harbour walk and made our way back to Watertown. It was around 10pm by the time we got back and I was beat enough to go straight to bed, reconfirming my mum's old adage about the fresh sea air tiring me out all the time.