Orcas T36's and T137's join T65A2, T65A4 and T77's

August 10, 2022 – Awesome winds today for sailing as we headed north up San Juan Channel downwind wing on wing. With storms coming up from the south we carefully picked our route to try to dodge the raindrops. Lightning, thunder, rain, hail, sunshine, more rain, sunshine and clouds… we had a mixture of all 4 seasons in one day. After passing Flattop Island National Wildlife Refuge we had a beam reach to New Channel. We had been following reports of two groups of orcas coming north in Haro Strait so we planned a route in their direction to intercept them. The first group of Biggs/Transient orcas were siblings T65A2 and T65A4 with T77, T77C, T77D, T77E who had first been found by Salmon Bank. Another group found by Seabird consisted of the T36’s with the T137’s. Eventually both groups merged and traveled north up Haro Strait. When we arrived on scene the group was pretty mixed up but quickly split back into their original groups and went their separate ways. We sailed by Mandarte Island to view the nesting gulls and cormorants and had a nice sail back across Haro Strait. With winds still pretty strong we stayed on the north side of Spieden Island to be in somewhat of the lee of the island but faced the winds head on as we came down San Juan Channel back to Friday Harbor.