I got pounded because of the whales

If you haven't sailed the past couple of days, get it tomorrow. It might be our last day of wind for awhile. Hopefully this north/north west wind will blow by us and we'll get one day of trades. Although the wind was a little onshore the waves stayed glassy and smooth the past two days. Challenging conditions, but epic as well. Yesterday as I made my way past the impact zone after another two turn down the line screamer a pod of whales popped up in front of me. They were probably about a hundred yards away, but it was still enough to scare me. I turned around quick and headed the opposite direction. Approaching whales has a huge fine attached to it and I knew there was a DLNR officer on the beach since they had the park closed. That's another story in itself. At this point I was now moving less then a mile an hour right through the impact zone. Sure enough the set of the day, a mast high five waver, stands up on the outside of the reef. The set I would have been on if not for six bus size obstacles in my path. I catapulted my mast toward the first wave and dove it down as deep as I could. It exploded right on top of me and ripped my gear out of my hands. I took my lickings and washed over to the channel with my gear. At that point I had almost forgotten about the whales. They were still just outside the reef cruising. I didn't want to go in but I couldn't go out because it's illegal to approach withing 100 yards of a pod and 300 yards of a pod with a calf. So I just sat there for about ten minutes watching them play. They're amazing animals and I don't know how people could have ever made a living from hunting them. A pretty cool experience and way more of a thrill then seeing them from a boat. They moved on and I continued sailing the rest of the afternoon.
Today I had some fun ones too, Jeff saw a good one. Out there for another marathon session tomorrow too then back to surfing...