August 18th, 1995

After an endless flight from my home in London to Seattle, then Anchorage, then Juneau, the plane finally mushed down through low clouds into Petersberg, Alaska, skimming just above the masts of the research vessel Odyssey on the way to a landing in pouring rain. Odyssey is a 93-foot ketch owned by my organization, the Whale Conservation Institute and will be our home for the next month while we study the Humpback whales that abound in these waters in summer and then film them in IMAX®. The rain has kept up all day and our transfer of gear from the airport to town, then down the steeply inclined ramp to the slippery floating dock below (Petersberg sports an enormous tide) to say nothing of the fitting of special contraptions that will hold the IMAX camera to Odyssey so we can film from new angles has been carried out in the rain.

Twice people have said "You should have been here before. All last month, we had perfect weather. I think you're too late; this kind of change in the weather means the summer's over." Somehow it doesn't seem like a very hopeful beginning for a filming trip. Because the weather is unusually calm, this area is excellent to work in and we have always thought that we would just have to put up with the rain. But this is ridiculous. We are now trying to comfort ourselves with the thought that rain and clouds provide their own beauty. Yeah, lots of luck.