WHILST sea kayaking off the Devon coast, a Holsworthy man came ‘face to fin’ with a 60ft ‘creature’.

Rupert Kirkwood, a 56-year-old retired farm vet from Holsworthy, was paddling around the Eddystone lighthouse from Plymouth, on a ‘flat calm sea’ when he encountered the large whale.

Mr Kirkwood told the Post he has been sea kayaking for 12 years. He has seen basking sharks, four types of dolphin, seals — and now a whale.

On his experience he said: “Absolutely fantastic. My ultimate dream. I never thought I would see a whale. I just have to track down the Great White Shark now!”

Mr Kirkwood had initially gone out in the hope of seeing different species of birds and mammals and he was certainly not disappointed with the outcome of his trip. He gave a detailed account of how his meeting with the great creature occurred, he said: “An eleven mile open sea crossing should give me the opportunity to see species of bird, and hopefully mammal, that you don’t see while paddling close to the shore.

“I wasn’t disappointed. Within an hour I had brief encounters with a school of porpoises criss-crossing in front of me catching fish, and a couple of small schools of common dolphins further away.

“And I was constantly entertained by Manx Sheawaters whipping past my kayak at great speed only inches above the water, and a constant stream of gannets overhead who always come over to ‘check me out’.”

Mr Kirkwood reached the lighthouse, after paddling over several nautical miles in his kayak.

After stopping for a well-earned cup of coffee and a biscuit he began his journey back to the shore.

Along the way, however, he heard a ‘prolonged ‘breathy’ sound, a long way to the west’ that he initially had thought was due to his lifejacket rubbing on the seat of his kayak. He said: “I thought at first it was my lifejacket rubbing on my kayak seat as I paddled, but it continued when I stopped.

“Over a mile away I could see a circling flock of gannets and through binoculars just caught a glimpse of a dark back rolling at the surface, surely too big to be a dolphin.”

That ‘dark back’ would later prove itself to be a 60ft whale. Mr Kirkwood said that he was undecided on whether he should go and investigate further, adding: “But then the creature surfaced again and it looked BIG. I tore towards it at top speed but it then passed me far off to the south and I watched it surface again heading away from me.”

As he came closer and closer he realised that the last time the whale had surfaced it had seemed to turn suddenly, he said: “I paddled furiously towards it for ten minutes and then waited. I found myself directly beneath a large circling flock of gannets that had appeared from nowhere.

“They seemed to be very expectant and I sensed something rather dramatic was about to happen.”

By this point Mr Kirkwood was about eight and a half miles from shore, he said: “I suddenly felt very vulnerable sitting on my eighteen foot sliver of plastic and a long way from dry land.”

Mr Kirkwood joked: “I did my best not to look (moderately straightforward), or smell (not so easy as I had been paddling for six hours and it was very hot), like a pilchard.”

Then suddenly, about 20 metres away, Mr Kirkwood saw a group of small fish jumping out of the water followed by an ‘almighty eruption of water as the whale, unseen, engulfed them.’

Mr Kirkwood added: “It then surfaced to breathe close by and, good grief, it was absolutely enormous.

“I have paddled with twenty-five foot long basking sharks before and they are slow and gentle and lumbering. This was not only vastly bigger, it was surging through the water at a remarkable speed.

“Although my heart was in my mouth I stayed to watch hoping it would come back. It did. On its next breathing sequence, surfacing about five times, it powered directly towards me with such a large bow wave I thought it was a submarine coming out of Plymouth. It passed close by the front of my kayak. What a thrill.”

This was not the only thrill of Mr Kirkwoods kayaking trip as moments later he was joined by a pod of four White-beaked dolphins.

After an hour in the company of such magnificent creatures Mr Kirkwood returned to the mainland to share his experience.

He sent the photographs he was able to capture to Hannah Jones from Marine Discovery in Penzance. She then sent them on to her friend, a whale expert, who was able to confirm it was in fact a Fin whale that Mr Kirkwood had seen swimming off the coast of Plymouth — the second largest creature on the planet and the fastest.

Mr Kirkwood said: “I did think it was a bit quick! And now realise why I felt a bit of trepidation when it was powering towards me at 20 knots.”

It had been Mr Kirkwood’s ‘number one ambition to see a whale’ and now he can add the Fin whale to the long list of marine and land creatures he has been lucky enough to encounter whilst out on the southwest coast.