Info on Capt Larry's excursion

[gazingm42]

We were on his boat on June 30, 2004 and had a great time. Our friends

had a digital point and shoot. Due to the delay on the point and shoot

camera he got some great pictures of water splashes. However I have a

Nikon D100 ... Digital SLR which has no delay. I can get about 3 pics per

second. Just be warned that you need to have some practice on this. Else

you will get alot of bad pics.

 

 

Thanks

 

Dan

[mpk]

I agree, shutter delay is a huge problem. I didn't bother with my point and shoot, I used a regular film SLR instead. I got great results. Although I can hold down and shoot more frames than a digital SLR, I got real nervous when I had to change film. Thought I would miss the big one ;) Luckily, I was ready to go when the big one came around.

 

I don't own a digital SLR, but from what I can tell it is the by far the best choice for whale shots.

[mscloyd]

We were on the Awesome Orca on August 17. We thoroughly enjoyed Captain Larry and he had a lot of knowledge. His naturalist on board was a college student from Anchorage, I believe, and was really good. We also had the naturalist (Barbara) from our ship, Coral Princess, on board as a guest. Yes there were other boats watching the same animals, but they were always behind us and didn't stay nearly as long. I sat right behind him and heard other boats contact him and he did give information over the radio about whale sightings. We were disappointed that we only saw 2 whales, but we followed them for a long period of time. An even better tour for us was the Kenai Fjord 6-hour boat tour in Seward. We saw humpbacks, orcas, porpoises, dolphin, sea otters, bald eagles, puffins, and a bear, in addition to getting up close and personal with a glacier. It was spectacular. Digital camera was a waste of time - use a 35mm instead for wildlife. I can't even count the number of things I missed because of the delay.

[miraclemet]

Just got back from Alaska yesterday.

 

Went Whale watching with Capt. Larry our morning in Juneau.

 

There were a few other boats out with us at various points, but they were all much larger pontoon boats, and looked far more crowded than the 20 of us on Larry's flat bottom boat.

 

Since it is a flat bottom boat it does bounce off of the wakes when he is motoring from spot to spot. Never to bad and never to long, didnt get the least bit queasy.

 

Capt' Larry is great, and even though we had a great time, saw a ton of whales (10-12 humpbacks, some porpises, and 3 Orcas, to go along with some harbor seals) Capt' Larry was disappointed and said he had hoped to come across anothe feeding area on our way back to the harbor...

 

I would definately do the trip again.

[stephenandrew]

Hi--

I also went with Orca this summer---and I would concur with many of the positive statements already made here. We felt we had plenty of room, we never felt sea sick (thought that will obviously differ from person to person) and felt Orca was a well run company in terms of logisitics, e.g. getting us from the ship to the whale watching boat. I would alos mention that they helped us book a whale watching tour and helicopter ride/glacier landing with Coastal Helicopters. It was nice that they handled all of the reservations (we only had to deal with Orca) and they even took us from the whale watching boat straight to Coastal's office. Anyway--I hope you will enjoy them.

 

Regarding photos, if you have an SLR (digital or film) I would strongly suggest using a 300MM lens if you have one. While Captain Larry got us pretty close to some of the whales, for the most part we were usually a decent distance off. Again, you could see the whales easily, but as far as photography goes, I think you may be disappointed with some of the pictures unless you have a decent telephoto lens. I have a Nikon D70 and took a lot of pictures on the boat, and was able to take pictues in rapid fire sequence. I don't think you would have much luck with a standard digital cameara because of the shutter lag.