Key takeaways
- A Skjervoy RIB whale watching boat is open and rigid-inflatable: an inflatable collar wrapped around a hard hull, with no cabin and no toilet aboard.
- Each RIB carries up to twelve passengers, sometimes as few as four, so everyone gets a clear, unobstructed view of the water and the whales.
- You sit straddle style on padded seats with handholds, braced in place as the boat turns and rides the swell on the open fjord.
- A small, quiet boat can slip in close to feeding orcas and humpbacks without scattering the pod, something a large catamaran manages less easily.
What a Rigid-Inflatable Actually Is
A RIB, short for rigid-inflatable boat, is exactly what the name says: a hard hull, usually fibreglass or aluminium, with an inflatable tube collar bonded around the outside. The tube gives buoyancy, absorbs knocks against ice and other boats, and lets the hull stay light enough to plane at speed. It is the same basic design coast guards and rescue services use worldwide, chosen for the same reasons a whale-watching operator chooses it: speed, stability in a chop, and a shallow draft that keeps it clear of rocks close to shore.
What matters for your three hours on board is simpler than the engineering: there is no cabin wall between you and the fjord, no glass roof, no rows of seats bolted to a deck below the waterline. You sit at deck level, close to the water, on a boat built to be thrown around by weather rather than to shelter you from it.
Twelve Seats and No Cabin
The Skjervoy RIB whale watching boats run with no more than twelve people aboard, sometimes as few as four. That cap is the whole point of choosing a RIB tour over a big catamaran carrying a hundred people. With twelve seats, nobody is watching an orca's back over three rows of strangers' heads. Whoever is driving can also read the group, slow down for anyone struggling with the cold, and reposition quickly the moment whales surface somewhere else.
What you do not get is a cabin. There is no indoor deck to retreat to if the wind picks up, no galley, no rows of padded bench seating out of the weather. The whole boat is open air, from the console at the front where the guide stands and drives, to the last seat at the back. Twelve seats and no cabin is a trade, not a flaw, and it is worth knowing before you commit to it.
Spray breaking over the tubes as a RIB closes in on a feeding pod near Skjervoy.
Where You Sit and How You Hold On
RIBs built for this kind of work typically use straddle seating: padded, saddle-shaped seats you sit astride, in a row down the centre or along the tubes, each with a handhold in front of you. It is closer to sitting on a motorbike than a bus seat, and it is designed that way on purpose. A straddle seat with a handhold lets you absorb the boat's motion through your legs and grip rather than being thrown sideways on a flat bench every time the hull meets a wave.
Before boarding, everyone is issued a full flotation suit, along with mittens, a balaclava, waterproof boots and ski goggles. The suit is bulky, and it is meant to be: it is your insulation against wind chill on top of whatever warm layers you arrive in. Once you are suited up and strapped into a seat, the guide gives a safety briefing before the RIB leaves the harbour, and that briefing covers exactly how to brace for the ride out.
How Fast It Feels
A RIB with this hull shape is built to get up on the plane and cover water quickly, and on the way out to find whales, the guide will use that speed. What that feels like from a straddle seat is wind against the front of your suit, spray coming over the tubes, and the engine note rising as the bow lifts. There is no cruising gently along here: the hull accelerates hard, settles into a rhythm as it clears each wave, and the ride asks you to grip the handhold and brace with your legs rather than sit back and watch the scenery.
Speed is not constant through the trip. Once the guide spots orcas or humpbacks working a herring shoal, the throttle comes back and the boat idles or drifts. A boat that can move fast to reach a sighting can also sit nearly silent once it arrives, and that shift from a hard run to a dead stop is part of what lets it approach feeding whales at all.
12 seats
Each RIB carries up to twelve people, so nobody watches Skjervoy's orcas over a stranger's shoulder.
No Toilet, No Shelter, and What Happens After
Be clear with yourself about this before you book: you will spend two and a half to three hours on the water in an open boat with no toilet and nowhere to get out of the wind. If the weather turns cold or wet, there is no cabin door to step through. That is the honest downside of the small-boat format, and it applies for the whole time the RIB is out on the fjord looking for whales.
The other side of it is that the discomfort has a clear end point. Once the boat returns, guests go into a heated clubhouse with a changing room, where you can get out of the flotation suit, warm up properly, and change into dry clothes if you brought a spare set. Tea, coffee and biscuits are provided there, along with baguettes during the day. The cold is real, and so is the warm room waiting for you afterwards.
Why a Small Boat Finds the Whales Better
Orcas and humpback whales come to the fjords around Skjervoy to feed on wintering herring, and a feeding pod does not sit still or wait for a boat. A RIB's shallow draft and tight turning circle let a guide follow a pod as it moves, cut the engine, and drift into position rather than making a slow, wide arc the way a larger vessel has to. Getting close enough to watch a whale surface, without pushing it away first, is largely a manoeuvring problem, and a small boat solves it better than a big one.
Noise plays a part too. A RIB's outboard, throttled back or off, disturbs the water far less than the diesel engines driving a hundred-seat catamaran. A quieter approach is, at minimum, a calmer one for the people watching, and it is a large part of why small-boat whale watching tours exist at Skjervoy alongside the bigger boats.
The Trade-off: Closer, Colder, Rougher
Weigh the two halves against each other honestly. A RIB sits lower in the water, gets nearer to the whales, and can move and stop faster than a catamaran, so the encounter feels less like watching from a distance and more like being among the animals. Against that: you are cold, you are exposed to spray and wind for hours, there is no toilet, and the ride is rougher than anything with a hull that size and a cabin around it.
If you get seasick easily, feel the cold badly, or want a warm indoor deck to retreat to between sightings, a small RIB is the wrong choice and a larger catamaran suits you better. If you want to be as close to the water and the whales as a paying passenger can get, and you are willing to dress for an Arctic morning and skip the toilet break, the RIB is built for exactly that.
