A pod of sperm whales cracked the hull of a yacht in the remote South Pacific forcing the crew to abandon ship.
The crew onboard the 52ft boat have described the terrifying encounter, which happened 250 nautical miles north of Norfolk Island.
“There was sort of a loud thud. The whole boat was pushed sideways,” said Australian Jemma Cooper, who was flung from the steering wheel by the force of the blow.
“We looked out to our port side, and there were six to eight, a pod, of whales there. So then it became clear that that's what it was,” she told AFP.
Jeremy Cooper, her husband, was sleeping below deck but was woken by the impact. “It was pretty immediately evident it was very serious,” he said.
“All the steering gear was smashed on the starboard side, and there was a significant amount of water coming in,” Cooper told AFP.
This is not the first time whales have struck a boat. Last year a family yacht was attacked by a pod of orcas in the middle of the night while sailing off the Portuguese coast.
At 1pm New Zealand time Saturday (1 am BST last Friday), about 30 minutes after the whale collision, they activated an emergency beacon.
“We declared a full mayday,” said New Zealand crew member Terry Hetherington. They spent the next few hours bailing out as much water as they could, he added.
Another crew member, Frenchman Martin Jaffre, said the whale collision left gashes in the hull and cracked the fibre glass structure. It also broke the steering.
“We could no longer steer the boat, and a boat with no steering quickly becomes a problem,” he said.
With lots of water filling the boat, Jaffre tried to slow it with expansion foam, and swam below the boat to inspect the hull, his crew mates said.
They bailed the water by hand and tried to stay aboard as long as possible, however they couldn’t stop the engine from getting clogged.
Late that night they decided to abandon ship and transferred to a life raft. Luckily the sea was calm and there was light from the full moon.
They cut the tether from the yacht in the early hours of Sunday, before it slipped beneath the water.
A 143-metre (470ft) container ship, the MV Sofrana Surville, rescued the sailors at 6 am Sunday (6 pm BST Saturday), the New Zealand military said, about 18 hours after their encounter with the sperm whale.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force flew a P-8A Poseidon patrol plane to the area to establish radio communications and coordinate the rescue, they said in a statement.
Within half an hour they were having a cup of coffee and a chat with the captain, said Cooper, ruing the end of their Pacific holiday voyage.
“It was wonderful, wonderful, and just a terrible, terrible ending, but luckily no loss of life,” he said.
Rescue Coordination Centre Operations Manager Mike Clulow praised the quick thinking of Tai Tam’s crew, as well as the coordination between the agencies and vessels involved in the rescue.
“The crew of the yacht did all the right things, and it was unfortunate to have struck a whale in open water. They were well prepared and the early activation of their EPIRB was key to helping get them to safety. It is an excellent reminder that being prepared when going to sea can save your life,” he said.
