Funchal Whale Watching Speed Boat Clothing

Why an open boat changes the answer

Everything on the operator's list follows from one fact: this is a fast semi-rigid boat with no cabin, no roof and no shelter. What you would wear on a shaded catamaran deck is not what this asks for.

The single biggest factor is apparent wind. A boat doing thirty knots creates a thirty knot breeze over everyone aboard regardless of what the actual weather is doing. Madeira's air might be a pleasant twenty two degrees; the air moving past your face is considerably cooler than that.

The second factor is sun. There is nothing over your head for two and a half hours, the sea reflects light back up at you, and the wind removes any sensation of heat that would normally tell you that you are burning. That combination catches people out more reliably than anything else on this coast. A whale watching Funchal catamaran gives you shade and shelter to dress for. This boat gives you neither, and the packing list follows from that.

The windbreaker

This is the item people leave behind and then regret for two and a half hours. It sits first among the clothing on the operator's own list, and it is not about warmth in the ordinary sense at all.

A thin shell that stops wind outperforms a thick fleece that does not. What you are blocking is moving air and occasional spray, and a light waterproof layer does both while packing down to nothing when you do not need it.

Take it even on a day that looks perfect from your balcony. A hotel terrace in Funchal is sheltered, low and warm; the water two miles offshore in a moving boat is none of those things, and there is nowhere on board to go if you get it wrong.

Shoes that work on a wet deck

Comfortable is the operator's word, and closed with some grip is the useful refinement. A semi-rigid deck gets wet, and it moves. Flip flops are a poor combination with both of those things.

Trainers or deck shoes are ideal. Anything with a hard smooth sole is worth avoiding, and anything you would be upset to see soaked is worth leaving at the hotel.

You are also stepping from a pontoon into a boat that is moving slightly, which is easy in sensible footwear and less easy in something that falls off. It is a small consideration that only matters twice, at the beginning and at the end.

Sun, and the mistake everybody makes

Apply sunscreen before you board, not once you are underway. On a moving open boat, doing it properly is awkward, and the bits people miss when standing on a pontoon are nothing compared with the bits they miss while being bounced along at speed.

Reapply at some point in the trip, particularly on the back of the neck, the ears and the tops of the feet. Those three are the places a sun hat does not cover and nobody thinks about until the evening.

The hat itself needs to survive the wind. A cap with a cord, or something that fits tightly, is the practical choice. A wide-brimmed sun hat with nothing holding it on will be in the Atlantic within a minute of the throttle going forward, and it stays there.

Sunglasses and the glare

Not on the operator's list, but worth adding. Sea glare over two and a half hours is genuinely tiring, and squinting into it makes spotting harder at exactly the moment you want to be looking hard.

Polarised lenses do more than dim things. By killing the glare bouncing off the surface they let you look down through it instead of at it, and that is a real advantage when a dolphin is swimming just below the surface beside the hull.

A retainer cord is the same argument as the hat. Glasses that go over the side are gone, and a boat that has just found a pod is not going to turn round for them.

Swimwear, and whether you will use it

Swimwear is on the list, so wear it under your clothes rather than packing it. Whether there is any time in the water depends entirely on conditions and on what the trip finds, and it is not a promised part of the format.

One guest describes a brief moment in the water with dolphins and notes it was very short, only seconds. That is the honest scale of it: this is a watching trip, not a swimming one, and any time in the sea is an occasional bonus rather than an itinerary item.

Wearing it under your clothes removes the changing problem entirely and takes no thought at all. There is no cabin to change in, so anyone who packed a swimsuit in a bag will not be putting it on.

What to leave ashore

Large bags and oversize luggage are not allowed on board, which is sensible on a boat where every centimetre of space is a seat or a walkway. Bring the smallest bag that holds what you need.

Pets, smoking and alcohol are all listed as not permitted on board, so none of that is a conversation to have at the pontoon with a boat waiting and eighteen other people already seated.

Anything that cannot get wet and cannot be replaced is better left at the hotel. A phone in a pocket on a semi-rigid is a phone taking a calculated risk, and a waterproof pouch on a lanyard solves that for very little effort and lets you photograph over the side without holding your breath.

Before you book