There I was, doing my typical early morning watch. We were about 8 miles from our destination, Porto Petro in Mallorca's southeast coast. Alec, Roan and Mark were still sleeping in their bunks when I saw it - the unmistakable blow of a whale! I grabbed the binoculars. There it was, proof! There are, indeed, whales in the Med. After pulling my worldwide whale guide book, I decided it was probably a mink whale.

Two months or so later while on our way to Gibraltar we saw several pods of pilot whales in the Mediterranean south coast of Spain. Often we saw the whole group just resting motionless at the surface, a common behavior for long-finned pilot whales.

For those of you in our inside joke about whales, Mark was gracious enough not to say - I told you so!