when sailing from Pelican Bay to Santa Barbara, wind was in the upper teens and we were sailing fast, my sailing buddy happened to climb up to the weather side and looked forward. He yelled "Tack, whale!", I crashed tacked and saw the whale just floating there. Glad I did not hit him at 7+ knots.

As I recall this was the same year (2007) that the Coasties and NOAA were broadcasting to commercial ships to limit their speed to 10 kts in the local shipping channel due to large numbers of whales.