Reservations Page

Channel Islands Killer Whale Quest, new for season 3: The Zodiac boat "Tern" will be the primary vessel accepting reservations first. If the Zodiac fills, the SafeBoat "Jaeger" will be put online. When making your reservation for the Zodiac, you may state a preference in the order comments to be switched to the SafeBoat should the Zodiac fill up.

Killer Whale Quests will be the default trip operating each weekend. However, if the wind conditions are not suitable for travel to the outer islands, an 8 Hour Humpback Whale Watching will be substituted for the Quest with a 24 to 72 hour notice given. (If you don't want your ticket to convert to this option you may have a refund or reschedule.)
These trips will focus on Humpback Whale watching closer to the coastline or inner Islands where the ocean is calmer. The Humpback trips are priced $80 cheaper than Orca Quests, so you will get a refund of the difference between tickets.
8 Hour Humpback Whale Watching will be available on the calendar as a waitlist option, so if you are interested in these trips please join the waitlist for your desired date, in the event a Killer Whale Quest is cancelled and converted to an 8 Hour Humpback Trip.

Reservation and Cancellation Policy

Important things to know:

1. Please double confirm your booking date while checking out, and again when you receive the confirmation email. Sometimes the calendar will jump to the next *available* date if the date you select is sold out. It is your responsibility to ensure the date that appears on your confirmation email is the date you are committing to join us on. Please contact us immediately if you do not receive a confirmation email. This is often due to the fact that people misspell their email address or omit the correct punctuation, ie @gmail.con, @hotmail,com

2. Because the Channel Islands are subject to rough weather, we do have a significant rate of cancellation. We do not want to take you out for a bad and unsuccessful trip. Often times the weather is not truly known until 24 to 48 hours in advance. Keep in mind, this is mostly related to WIND speed on the water and not general storminess or clouds. We are very good at knowing the impacts of certain forecasts on our trip. Please leave the weather speculation to us. If you have questions or concerns about a specific weather event, please do reach out and we will give you our analysis. A full refund or reschedule option will be provided to you in the event of us cancelling due to weather.

3. If you back out of a trip within 24 hours of the departure time, we will reluctantly offer you a 50% refund, or a reschedule to a future date with a 40% fee added to your original ticket price. For example, if you pay $199 for a ticket, and give notice within a 24 hours that something came up, we can transfer that reservation for you for an additional fee paid of $79.60. If you want to abandon your reservation with notice given within 24 hours you will receive a refund of 50% of the ticket price. If you "no call, no show" with no notice to us, you will forfeit your entire ticket and it becomes dead and NON-TRANSFERRABLE to a future date.

4. There will be a minimum passenger requirement that must be met for the trip to operate, or we may have to cancel and refund or reschedule your tickets. Generally speaking on a Killer Whale Quest trip this will be 4 people, and on a 8 Hour Channel Islands Zodiac trip this will be 5 people.

Please note that there is considerable expense in operating this type of trip, and it is a delicate balance between profit and loss. The captain and crew drive 2 hours from Orange County and pay for a hotel room. The boat operates sometimes 100 or 200 miles per day and burns 60 to 120 gallons of fuel. Because of the small capacity boat, every ticket sold covers a substantial portion of expenses.