We almost ran into the monster, whilst cruising on shallow seas through short steep waves. It was at a time when adventuring yachties and readers of the novel 'Moby Dick' still believed that whales were angry monsters that would attack and smash a boat to pieces and around the time Sikaflex was invented . It happened two years before Greenpeace launched its first anti-whaling campaign and it was still four years until the National Geographic would publish and introduce the world to the plight and ‘ Songs of the Humpback Whale’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WOjJIynHgM The north-west-coast of New Zealand was poorly charted back then, maybe it still is. Our charts were notarized with comments from early explorers warning of shallow seas and shifting sandy bottoms. The Admiralty Pilot Books which we carried also had little information. It was a time when most cruising yachties still navigated with paper charts, Walker-Logs and sextants in wooden boats fastened with copper na