I never seemed to have any luck seeing whales until a couple of years ago. We took a boat out when we were in Broome (NW Australia) and ended up in a pod of whales, it was an amazing experience.
But the funniest experience we've had whilst trying to see whales happened about 8 years ago. We'd heard that there were pods of humpbacks travelling down the coast, so my friend (who owned a boat) thought it would be a good idea for us all to take this boat out to the ocean and have a look.
We travelled down the Swan River and out into the ocean uneventfully, and ended up about 5 kms off the coast. We'd brought some lunch with us, so we decided to eat while we were out there, and my friend stopped the engine. We probably stayed out for 2-3 hours and didn't see anything (we didn't really know where they were), so we decided to head back. Boat wouldn't start. The hatch to the engine was then opened and various engine parts were pulled out and looked at, and then put back, and eventually, we got it started (phew!).
We eventually got the boat back to the ramp where the car and trailer were, and lined up the car down the ramp. Now it was a relatively small car and quite a big boat, so once it was loaded, you just had to put your foot down and pull it out. What we didn't realise was that there was a large pothole in the ramp, just below the water line, where it wasn't visible. So, as the car pulled out rather firmly, the trailer landed in the pothole, and the boat lurched alarmingly and came off balance, half falling out of the trailer. So my friend backed the trailer back into the river to try and get the boat straight again, and realign the car and trailer a bit further down the ramp.
Now this took about 1/2 hour with the boat sitting in the water only held to the shore by a rope. When we were finally ready to load up the boat, we looked out and realised that something was wrong. Upon wading out to the boat, we discovered that the stern was mostly underwater and getting worse. We quickly came to the conclusion that the lurch with the pothole must have knocked a hole in the side of the boat ( where it hit the trailer).
We were then in a panic, trying to get the half sunk and rapidly getting worse boat back onto the trailer. However, the weight of the water was too much for the car and it couldn't move, the tyres kept spinning, so some other people tied their cars to the front of ours to try and add some more pull, all to no avail. The boat wouldn't come out of the water. We ended up having to hire a crane to come and get it out, much to amusement of all concerned.
What surprised me was that we were laughing the most. The situation was so ridiculous that we couldn't do anything else.

ding"sinking"dong