When I went whale watching in Alaska the whales came so close to the not very big boat we were in you could have reached out and touched the whale if you leaned out the window enough. They would breach pretty close to the boat also, but not as close as when they were just swimming through the water. The guys leading the tour said the whales never hit the boats, they never come up and jar the boats. I don’t know if is a hard fast fact, but at least in their experience they had never seen it and were not concerned about it. We saw groups of whales come up 12 and 14 at a time, it was unbelievable. So many at once. Even the guides that day said they had not seen anything like that in a long time.