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Whale watch trips can be the experience of a lifetime. It’s hard to fathom just what a 90-foot-long blue whale really looks like until you see him with your own eyes. You can watch videos of 100 humpbacks migrating, but you can’t get a sense of what it would feel like to see it for yourself. Then, there’s always that one that is just a little bit curious about the menagerie of spectators, and wants to swim up and investigate. “If you make eye contact with a whale you are never the same again — ever,” says Benji Shake of the Princess Monterey Whale Watching cruise. However, your cruise of a lifetime can quickly turn into a huge disappointment if you’re not prepared.

Veteran cruiser Bob Messina of Georgia recalls one horrific experience in February of 2007. After 11 days aboard the MSC Lirica, he and his wife decided to book passage aboard a whale watching boat for $71 out of Samana, Dominican Republic. The passengers boarded a 24-foot open-air boat with 30 seats, no bathroom and no cover. Despite the 6-8 foot swells, the tour operators handed out seasickness pills and assured them everything would be fine. Two women seated next to Messina started throwing up within minutes. “For the next hour and a half, we experienced rough seas and what we called ‘whale chasing,’ not whale watching,” he explains. Five boats in the prime watch area would wait to see a spout and take off at full-speed to get a closer look, despite regulations mandating that whale watching boats stay at least 100 feet away. Messina recalls, “After about two hours, people started barfing everywhere, due to the rough sea conditions. Most of the passengers wanted to go back to the ship, but the operator said he needed to stay out for at least three hours.”

Whale watch trips are generally directed to cancel their outing if the waves are too high, but money-hungry tour operators insist on profiting, no matter what. In this case, Bob Messina and his fellow passengers had trouble even seeing the humpback whales because the boat was rocking so much. “If the boat was on top of the swell when the whale jumped, we saw it,” Bob explains, “otherwise, all you saw was the wall of water.” After getting soaked and thrown up on by passengers seated behind them, Bob and his wife were done. They, and other passengers immediately went to the front desk to demand their money back. After contacting the head office, the couple was offered free dry cleaning and a 25% discount. To Bob Messina, paying $53.25 for “the abuse and puke” was a huge rip-off that he would later dispute with his credit card company. “I guess the lesson is that you can’t count on the cruise line to watch out for your safety,” he says. “All they want is the mighty buck!”

Sometimes travelers also come wearing the wrong clothes and find their whale watch trips to be a real disaster. “I don’t care how nice it looks; dress warm,” advises Pete Bruno, owner of Randy’s Fishing and Whale Watching Trips based out of California. Whale watching in California can be deceiving because even if it’s sunny and warm on land, it’s always much colder on the water, especially with a breeze on the bay. It’s best to wear multiple layers, knit hats and gloves. “Wear rubber-soled shoes,” Bruno recommends. He says that leather-soled shoes can be very slippery on a wet deck and that “high heels are not very fashionable on a boat.” Wearing sunscreen and sunglasses should also be standard protocol, no matter the weather. Bringing a raincoat can protect you from the occasional odd humpback whale that decides to breech and blow his slime all over you too.

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