The water was glassy calm. It is difficult to estimate the size of a large whale from a boat because you often lack a reference length. I was on a 35 foot boat at the time and this whale was almost three times that length, which would make it about 90 feet long. It was an awesome sight. If you step on a styrofoam cup, the force applied is from one direction and it crushes.
Many seabirds are strictly coastal, like gulls and a lot of tern species.
These birds generally stay within sight of land. But many kinds feed only far out of sight of land, albatrosses and petrels for example. Most seabirds are long-lived, often living decades, and may spend the first few years of their lives at sea without ever returning to land. Finally, when they are old enough to breed, they will come back to the island where they hatched and raise their own young. At night most seabirds quit feeding and just sit down on the water and go to sleep, so being far at sea is not a problem.