When my beautiful Icelandic friend, Hrafnhildur suggested her partner Magnus would take me out on the Coast Guard Boat (with a donation in lieu of payment) I imagined a large steady boat, and some gentle time on the Fjord, listening to the sea lapping, and admiring the vistas of snow topped mountains. How wrong I was, we were in a turbo charged Coast Guard rubber zodiac, wearing the mandatory orange dry suits… Firstly we did a lap of the island at warp speed, supposedly to check for whales, but we went so fast it was a little difficult to spot much… we then headed deeper into the Fjord and were in luck, spotting 2 large humpbacks slowly heading our way. They blew air, swam along the surface and the slowly descending with a tail raised before they disppeared. Out trusty captain wasn’t to be discouraged so we tootled off vaguely in that direction, only to find two more humpbacks coming at us from a different direction, and when I say coming at us, I mean one had to dive under out boat… they are such magnificent creatures, and there was quite a lot of yelping from Hrafa and I demanding Magnus get out of their way! Once these whales had slowly departed, Magnus spied a fishing vessel with a good sized wake… and some bouncing around like a champagne cork in the ocean was next on the cards, he assured us this was necessary practice for ocean rescue… then the ferry could be seen, so we raced off and rammed that and pretended to be pirates and attempt to board the vessel… unsettling some poor tourists, but the locals seemed used to it and just waved and rolled their eyes at Magnus’s antics. Meanwhile Hrafa and I just held on for dear life. After we had tormented all the local marine traffic it was time to head home. It was such a beautiful afternoon on the water, and wonderful to see those beautiful creatures of the sea.