whale sinks sailboat video

Watch CBS News

Killer whales attack and sink sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar — again

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: May 14, 2024 / 4:54 PM EDT / CBS News

A sailing yacht sunk in the Strait of Gibraltar on Sunday after an unknown number of orcas  slammed into the vessel with two people on board and caused a water leak, officials said. Both crew members were rescued by a passing oil tanker, said Spain's maritime rescue service, marking the latest killer whale attack on a boat in what has become a pattern in recent years.

The incident happened at around 9 a.m. local time in the narrow strait between Spain and Morocco that has become a notorious site of human interactions with pods of killer whales that, for reasons still not fully understood, ram into boats and at times even sink them . In this case, crew members on board the SV Alboran Cognac yacht put out an emergency call for an evacuation after they encountered orcas roughly 14 miles off the coast of Cape Spartel. 

The crew members reported feeling blows to the hull of the vessel and rudder, which was damaged by the whales, the rescue service said. The agency's coordination center in Tarifa, on the Spanish side of the Strait of Gibraltar, helped arrange for their evacuation via the tanker MT Lascaux. The tanker was able to collect the crew members from the sinking yacht within the hour, and they disembarked in Gibraltar before 10:30 a.m. They abandoned the SV Alboran Cognac, which proceeded to completely disappear into the ocean.

Anyone sailing through waters from the Gulf of Cádiz in southern Spain and the Strait of Gibraltar, either in a larger motorized vessel or a personal sailing boat, is advised to avoid certain areas that the maritime rescue service marks as potentially dangerous spots for orca interactions. The greatest threats exist between May and August, when officials say that pods of killer whales are most commonly seen in those parts of the Atlantic. 

But previously recorded incidents suggest those dangers may be present at any time. Last October, a Polish boat touring company reported that a pod of orcas had managed to sink one of its yachts after repeatedly slamming into the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing it to leak. Last June, two sailing teams competing in an international race around the world reported frightening scenarios in which multiple orcas rammed into or pushed up against their boats or as they sailed west of Gibraltar. 

No one on board any of the vessels was hurt in those encounters, but the documented rise in confrontational behavior has researchers and sailors trying to determine why orcase have attempted to sink or capsize so many boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal. 

Some sailors have even resorted to blasting thrash metal music in a bid to deter the apex predators.

Reports of orcas interacting with humans have more than tripled in the last two years or so, according to the research group GTOA, which has documented hundreds of such incidents in the region since 2020. But some of the latest data points to possible changes in the orcas' etiquette, with the group reporting only 26 interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar and Bay of Biscay areas between January and May of this year. That number is 65% lower than the number of interactions recorded in the region over the same months last year, and 40% lower than the average number of interactions recorded in the same months between 2021 and 2023, according to GTOA.

• Boat Accident

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

More from CBS News

"Top Chef Masters" star Naomi Pomeroy dies in river tubing accident

Shooting attack at Oman mosque leaves 6 people dead, dozens wounded

Remains of medieval palace where popes lived possibly found in Rome

Floods hammer Afghanistan, with storms blamed for at least 40 deaths

Rescued at sea: After a whale sank their sailboat, Florida crew stranded in South Pacific

• A 44-foot sailing ship, Raindancer, was hit by a whale on March 13, sinking the boat in the South Pacific.
• The four people on board were adrift in a life raft and dinghy with a satellite phone and some supplies.
• Phone calls, texts and social media helped lead another ship, the Rolling Stones, to rescue the castaways in about 10 hours.

A lifelong dream sailing trip turned into a potentially life-threatening ordeal for a four-person crew after a whale shipwrecked their boat.

Rick Rodriguez, owner of the sailing ship Raindancer, and three crewmembers onboard were amidst a voyage of more than 3,000 nautical miles to French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The 44-foot cruising boat had left the Galapagos at the end of February, after passing through the Panama Canal three weeks earlier.

The crew would make it to French Polynesia, but not in the manner expected.

More than halfway to the Marquesas Islands, disaster struck: They were eating homemade pizza for lunch "when it felt like we ran into a concrete wall," Rodriguez recalled in a note posted March 14 on the Facebook Boatwatch Group .

"I heard a loud crashing noise simultaneous with a metal clanking. I heard (crewmember) Alana (Litz) yell, 'we hit a whale,' then I looked to port and saw a huge whale, and blood gushing out of the side of it as it began swimming down."

"It felt like a scene out of a movie," Litz told NBC's Today show during an interview posted Wednesday . 

'Doing the right thing': Slovakia becomes first Western nation to send fighter jets to Ukraine. Live updates

Scottish dry dock accident: Ship dislodges, tips over in Scotland dry dock; dozens injured

A whale of an emergency in the South Pacific

A former professional yacht captain, Rodriguez saw that the collision "opened up multiple holes (and) cracks near the stern of the boat and the water was up to the floorboards within about 30 seconds. Maybe less," he said in a post on Instagram .

About the boat, which he purchased in 2021 and had lived on, Rodriguez said, "I made attempts to save the boat but I was, unfortunately, unsuccessful."

The crew quickly gathered safety equipment, some supplies including water, emergency gear and  electronics including a satellite phone, satellite Wi-Fi hotspot and a power bank. The dinghy was launched and loaded. Rodriguez used a VHF radio on board to make a mayday call and set off an emergency beacon, he told The Washington Post .

Before Raindancer "took her last breath about 15 minutes after she got hit," Rodriguez said, the crew were in a dinghy and a lifeboat was deployed. "I’m proud of the way our crew handled the situation, and the first priority on any boat is always the safety of the crew and passengers," he said on Instagram.

Rescue mission: Wisconsin man sailing around the world rescues castaway crew in South Pacific

Now adrift, seafarers awaited rescue

Rodriguez, 31, of Tavernier, Florida, activated a Globalstar SPOT tracker, which regularly transmits its location, and continued sending a mayday call hourly on the radio, The Post reported.

Meanwhile, the crew's distress signal had been picked up by officials in Peru, who alerted the U.S. Coast Guard, The Post reported. 

A commercial ship 90 miles to the south changed course toward the castaways after getting an urgent broadcast from the Coast Guard and there were also about two dozen boats participating in an around-the-world yachting rally sailing a similar route, the Post reported.

With the crew in the dinghy and life raft, Rodriguez sent a text message to friend Tommy Joyce, a sailor whose boat was about 180 miles behind on the same route, as a safety precaution..

“Tommy this is no joke,” he typed. “We hit a whale and the ship went down.”

“Tell as many boats as you can,” Rodriguez said. “Battery is dangerously low.”

Rodriguez also texted his brother, Roger, in Miami, to let him and his mother know the situation. He also asked his brother to relay their location via WhatsApp to Joyce. 

Online lifeline helps save South Pacific castaways

Joyce also posted a note about the incident on the Facebook page for  Boatwatch , a volunteer network of amateur radio operators who search for missing boats and people lost at sea.

"It was the Boatwatch group that ended up having somebody on there who knew" a 45-foot catamaran called the Rolling Stones was the closest boat, Joyce told Today.

"I think we were about 60-65 miles away when we realized that we were the closest boat," the boat's captain Geoff Stone told Today. 

Stone of Muskego, Wisconsin, was circumnavigating the globe aboard the Rolling Stones, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , part of the USA TODAY Network.

When they learned about the boat's dilemma, the crew didn't hesitate. "It was going to take us a while to get there, but we were going to change our course," said Mark Moriarty, Stone's father-in-law, who was also on board.

When Rodriguez turned on the satellite radio and hotspot two hours later, there was a message from Joyce: “We got you bud.”

Rescue ship used beacon, coordinates for nighttime recovery

Just more than nine hours later, the crew on Rolling Stones saw the flashing light of the dinghy and rescued the castaways. As the Rolling Stones approached, they spotted a beacon and a flare and the crews communicated via radio.

"I thought for sure the hardest part was going to be locating them," Stone said. "Luckily with the new technologies ... the latest coordinates we were given was all very accurate."

What's everyone talking about?: Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news

Earthquake: At least 9 killed as quake in Afghanistan, Pakistan sends people fleeing from homes

Stone, reached on his vessel on the way to an island in French Polynesia, told the Journal Sentinel the last few days have been "a real humbling experience."

"The right place at the right time to help them out was just by chance," he said. "I'm really glad and happy that we were able to do that."

Rodriguez mourned the loss of his ship, Raindancer, on Instagram, saying it "had all my belongings on it … it was my ticket to exploring the world, she was my refuge, my rock, the one place I could be where I felt myself, she was my friend, I would give to her and she would give back memories, lessons, and stories. … In the end, she was lost at sea, and left myself and the crew with one last incredible story."

Contributing: Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter:  @mikesnider .

Whale lands on boat off Massachusetts coast in ‘insane’ moment caught on video

A whale breached and landed on the bow of a small boat briefly submerging it in the water, in a stunning moment caught on video Sunday morning off the Massachusetts coast.

In footage of the encounter, the whale, which appears to be a humpback, can be seen emerging from the water before landing on the 19-foot vessel, bringing it crashing down into the water before bouncing upright again.

The incident unfolded around 10 a.m. in the area of White Horse Beach in Plymouth, town officials said.

“It was insane," one witness, Ryder Parkhurst, told NBC Boston . "The guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Pops up, bang ... right on the bow of the guy’s boat.”

“I just saw the boat go freaking flying, it was crazy,” Parkhurst said. “It was nuts. I couldn’t believe the thing was still floating.”

In a statement published Sunday, the town said a Plymouth Harbormaster Department boat assigned to the area responded to check on the vessel occupants.

"The operator reported no injuries and no major damage that affected the seaworthiness of the vessel," it said. It was unclear whether the whale sustained any injuries in the incident.

The department's crews had been monitoring the area since around 5 a.m. Sunday in a bid to ensure everyone's safety after a  boat was bumped by a whale Friday , NBC Boston reported.

Plymouth Harbormaster Chad Hunter said many boats had been out in the area for recreational fishing Sunday due to an abundance of bait fish, which he said was also attracting whales to the area.

The town said the Plymouth Harbormaster Department had forwarded information about the incident to the Massachusetts Environmental Police. The police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

The town said the Harbormaster Department recommended boaters keep a distance of at least 100 yards from whales to "minimize potential interactions."

“This interaction, while rare, is a reminder that these interactions can be dangerous for both boaters and whales,” it said.

Kurt Chirbas is a senior editor for NBC News based in New York.

Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Their Boat Hit a Whale and Sank. The Internet Saved Their Lives.

After the collision in the Pacific Ocean this month, Rick Rodriguez and three other sailors were rescued by a fellow boater, with an assist from a satellite internet signal.

By Mike Ives

When Rick Rodriguez’s sailboat collided with a whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean earlier this month, it sank within about 15 minutes. But not before he and his three fellow mariners had escaped with essential supplies and cutting-edge communications gear.

One was a pocket-size satellite device that allowed Mr. Rodriguez to call his brother, who was thousands of miles away on land, from a life raft. That call would set in motion a successful rescue effort by other sailors in the area who had satellite internet access on their boats.

“Technology saved our lives,” Mr. Rodriguez later wrote in an account that he typed on his iPhone from the sailboat that had rescued him and his crew.

People involved in the roughly nine-hour rescue say it illustrates how newer satellite technologies, especially Starlink internet systems , operated by the rocket company SpaceX since 2019 , have dramatically improved emergency communication options for sailors stranded at sea — and the people trying to find them.

“All sailors want to help out,” said Tommy Joyce, a friend of Mr. Rodriguez who helped organize the rescue effort from his own sailboat. “But this just makes it so much easier to coordinate and help boaters in distress.”

Starlink’s service gives vessels access to satellite signals that reach oceans and seas around the globe, according to the company. The fee-based connection allows sailors to reach other vessels on their own, instead of relying solely on sending distress signals to government-rescue agencies that use older, satellite-based communication technologies.

But the rapid rescue would not have been possible without the battery-powered satellite device that Mr. Rodriguez used to call his brother. Such devices have only been used by recreational sailors for about a decade, according to the United States Coast Guard. This one’s manufacturer, Iridium, said in a statement that the device is “incredibly popular with the sailing community.”

“The recent adoption of more capable satellite systems now means sailors can broadcast distress to a closed or public chat group, sometimes online, and get an instant response,” said Paul Tetlow, the managing director of the World Cruising Club, a sailing organization whose members participated in the rescue .

A sinking feeling

Whales don’t normally hit boats. In a famous exception, one rammed the whaling vessel Essex as it crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean in 1820, an accident that was among the inspirations for Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “ Moby Dick .”

In Mr. Rodriguez’s case, a whale interrupted a three-week voyage by his 44-foot sailboat, Raindancer , from the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador to French Polynesia. At the time of the impact on March 13, the boat was cruising at about seven miles per hour and its crew was busy eating homemade pizza.

Mr. Rodriguez would later write that making contact with the whale — just as he dipped a slice into ranch dressing — felt like hitting a concrete wall.

Even as the boat sank, “I felt like it was just a scene out of a movie," Alana Litz, a friend of Mr. Rodriguez and one of the sailors on Raindancer, told NBC’s “Today” program last week. The story of the rescue had been reported earlier by The Washington Post .

Raindancer’s hull was reinforced to withstand an impact with something as large and heavy as a cargo container. But the collision created multiple cracks near the stern, Mr. Rodriguez later wrote , and water rose to the floorboards within about 30 seconds.

Minutes later, he and his friends had all escaped from the boat with food, water and other essential supplies. When he looked back, he saw the last 10 feet of the mast sinking quickly. As a line that had been tying the raft to the boat started to come under tension, he cut it with a knife.

That left the Raindancer crew floating in the open ocean, about 2,400 miles west of Lima, Peru, and 1,800 miles southeast of Tahiti.

“The sun began to set and soon it was pitch dark,” Mr. Rodriguez, who was not available for an interview, wrote in an account of the journey that he shared with other sailors. “And we were floating right smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a dinghy and a life raft. Hopeful that we would be rescued soon.”

‘Not a drill’

Before Raindancer sank, Mr. Rodriguez activated a satellite radio beacon that instantly sent a distress alert to coast guard authorities in Peru, the country with search and rescue authority over that part of the Pacific, and the United States, where his boat was registered.

In 2009, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued a sailboat crew whose vessel had collided with a whale and sank about 70 miles off the coast of Mexico. But Raindancer’s remote location made a rescue like that one impossible. So in the hour after it sank, U.S. Coast Guard officials used decades-old satellite communications technology to contact commercial vessels near the site of the accident.

One vessel responded to say that it was about 10 hours away and willing to divert. But, in the end, that was not necessary because Mr. Rodriguez’s satellite phone call to his brother Roger had already set a separate, successful rescue effort in motion.

Mr. Rodriguez’s brother contacted Mr. Joyce, whose own boat, Southern Cross, had left the Galápagos around the same time and was about 200 miles behind Raindancer when it sank. Because Southern Cross had a Starlink internet connection, it became a hub for a rescue effort that Mr. Joyce, 40, coordinated with other boats using WhatsApp, Facebook and several smartphone apps that track wind speed, tides and boat positions.

“Not a drill,” Mr. Joyce, who works in the biotech industry, often from his boat, wrote on WhatsApp to other sailors who were in the area. “We are in the Pacific headed that direction but there are closer vessels.”

After a flurry of communication, several boats began sailing as quickly as possible toward Raindancer’s last known coordinates.

SpaceX did not respond to an inquiry about the system’s coverage in the Pacific. But Douglas Samp, who oversees the Coast Guard’s search and rescue operations in the Pacific, said in a phone interview that vessels only began using Starlink internet service in the open ocean this year.

Mr. Joyce said that satellite internet had been key to finding boats that were close to the stranded crew.

“They were all using Starlink,” he said, speaking in a video interview from his boat as it sailed to Tahiti. “Can you imagine if we didn’t have access?”

Of course, there was one sailboat captain without a Starlink signal during the rescue: Mr. Rodriguez. After night fell over the Pacific, he and his fellow sailors resorted to the ancient method of sitting in a life raft and hoping for the best.

In the darkness, the wind picked up and flying fish jumped into their dinghy, according to Mr. Rodriguez’s account. Every hour or so, they placed a mayday call on a hand-held radio, hoping that a ship might happen to pass within its range.

None did. But after a few more hours of anxious waiting, they saw the lights of a catamaran and heard the voice of its American captain crackling over their radio. That is when they screamed in relief.

Mike Ives is a general assignment reporter. More about Mike Ives

Around the World With The Times

Our reporters across the globe take you into the field..

One of Gaza’s Deadliest Days: A New York Times analysis of an Israeli hostage rescue shows how the operation escalated  into a firefight and a series of airstrikes that killed scores of people.

A Village’s Holy War: A battle has erupted in Moldova over whether to keep links to the Russian Orthodox Church  — seen by many as a tool of Moscow’s influence abroad.

Myanmar’s Poet Warrior: Ko Maung Saungkha, leader of a rebel militia fighting the Myanmar dictatorship, is not the only poet commander  in a country with a strong tradition of political verse.

Argentina’s ‘Almost’ Jewish President: Javier Milei has developed a public devotion to Judaism  that is unusual for a leader of a predominantly Roman Catholic country.

The Book Bag That Binds Japan: No rule requires Japan’s elementary school students to wear the boxy, bulky backpack known as the randoseru. But for nearly 150 years, nearly all of them have .

• March 22, 2023

Sailors speak out after whale sinks boat in middle of Pacific

Captain Rick Rodriguez and three of his crew mates were 13 days into three-week sail from the Galapagos to French Polynesia when their boat slammed into a whale.

Up Next in news

Whale sinks boat in the pacific, how matt gutman escaped a sinking car on live tv, the 2024 total eclipse seen across north america.

• Privacy Policy — 
• Your US State Privacy Rights — 
• Children's Online Privacy Policy — 
• Interest-Based Ads — 
• Terms of Use — 
• Do Not Sell My Info — 
• Contact Us — 

© 2024 ABC News

A 'massive' whale destroyed a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific, leaving 4 friends stranded for 10 hours

• Rick Rodriguez and his friends went on a boat journey from the Galapagos to French Polynesia.
• About two weeks into the trip, the group found themselves stranded for 10 hours in the middle of the Pacific. 
• Their sailboat had been struck by a whale and sunk, The Washington Post  reported. 

One of the first things Rick Rodriguez did after his boat started to sink was text his friend. "Tommy this isn't a joke," he wrote . "We hit a whale and the ship went down."

He really wasn't joking.

Rodriguez and three of his friends were on a three week sailing journey. They had started near the Galapagos Islands and were on their way to French Polynesia. Just shy of two weeks into their journey, however, they found themselves in a lifeboat, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, The Washington Post reported.

They drifted for 10 hours before a civilian ship finally rescued them, Sail World Cruising, an online sailing publication, reported.

Rodriguez told The Post that him and his friends were eating pizza at about 1:30 p.m. on March 13 when they heard a loud bang. Some 15 minutes later, the boat sank. The friends quickly collected essential supplies like water, food, and documents, and then scrambled into the lifeboat, according to Sail World Cruising. 

Rodriguez, who fortunately still had some charge left on a portable wifi device, was able to reach out for help. "Tell as many boats as you can," he told his friend, who was also a sailor. "Battery is dangerously low."

Alana Litz, one of the friends on the sailboat, told the Post she was the first to see what she now believes was a Bryde's whale that was at least 44-feet long — the length of the boat. Bryde's are a species of great whale,  similar to blue or humpback whales. 

"I saw a massive whale off the port aft side with its side fin up in the air," Litz told the Post.

Rodriguez said he saw it bleeding as it went back into the water.

Fortunately for the stranded crew, there were about two dozen ships sailing in the same direction — part of a yacht race known as World ARC, according to Sail World Cruising. 

Related stories

"There was never really much fear that we were in danger," Rodriguez told The Post. "Everything was in control as much as it could be for a boat sinking."

It's not uncommon for boats and whales to collide, especially with the rise in the amount of cargo and cruise boat traffic. The Los Angeles Times reported that ship strikes have actually been a danger to whales in the Pacific. 

"Anywhere you have major shipping routes and whales in the same place, you are going to see collisions," Russell Leaper, an expert with the International Whaling Commission told the Times. "Unfortunately, that's the situation in many places."

The Maritime Executive , a magazine covering maritime issues, reported last week that a sailboat had to be towed to safety in the Strait of Gibraltar after three orcas knocked into it. The magazine reported that orcas have been slamming into boats in the area for years. 

A spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission told the Post that since 2007, there have been 1,200 reports of boats and whales colliding. But according to the US Coast Guard it's rare for collisions to cause significant damage. 

• Main content

A Wisconsin man sailing around the world rescued 4 people from the ocean after a whale sank their boat

For Geoff Stone of Muskego, it's a once-in-lifetime dream, circumnavigating the globe aboard his 45-foot catamaran the Rolling Stones.

But on March 13 in the Pacific, Stone's dream turned into something more: a lifesaving adventure.

Stone and his crew rescued four sailors who were forced to abandon a 44-foot sailboat named the Raindancer as it was journeying from the Galápagos to French Polynesia.

The Raindancer wasn't rocked by the sea. It was struck by a whale and sank, the sailors quickly hustling into a lifeboat and dinghy and activating a GPS beacon, with the captain sending a text message to a friend.

Nearly 10 hours later, the Rolling Stones arrived.

The daring nighttime rescue has become an international sensation.

Stone, reached on his vessel while heading to an island in French Polynesia, told the Journal Sentinel the last few days have been "a real humbling experience."

"The right place at the right time to help them out was just by chance," he said. "I'm really glad and happy that we were able to do that."

Stone and his family are sailing around the world a chunk at a time

Stone is a year and a half into his journey. But the dream has been with him for more than 20 years, even though he put it aside for work (he's in real estate) and starting a family.

But he finally made it happen, convincing his wife to come along for the ride.

Stone has been taking this 'round-the-world journey a chunk at a time with his wife, Meghan, and their young children Charlie, Eaylen and Lachlan. They started in Florida, spent a winter in the Bahamas, went through then Panama Canal and then it was on to the Galápagos.

Stone's wife and kids weren't on the boat during this latest 21-day leg to French Polynesia. Instead, they flew ahead with Meghan's mother, who was with them in the Galápagos.

Stone was with his father-in-law, Mark Moriarty, a retiree who worked for 30 years in sales and marketing for Rockwell Automation, along with his brother Alex, originally from Elkhorn and friend Cory Bergendahl, originally from Muskego.

"It's a very calm and common crossing for people navigating around the world," Moriarty said. "There were actually around 30 boats going around the same time as we were crossing."

Crew was 60 miles away, used coordinates and beacon to locate boat in nighttime rescue

On the day of the rescue, Moriarty recalled "the four of us were just sailing along, making another day of it," when Stone's brother Jeffrey came across a post in a social media group that a boat "was submerged."

They checked out the alert and realized that they were the vessel closest to where Raindancer sank, around 60 miles away.

"It was going to take us a while to get there, but we were going to change our course," Moriarty said.

The crew didn't hesitate.

"They were people in the sailing community that had a bad, unfortunate situation," Moriarty said. "It's what good people do. You go and help them."

As they made their way to the last known location of the Raindancer, Stone was apprehensive about how to perform the rescue.

"I thought for sure the hardest part was going to be locating them," Stone said. "Luckily with the new technologies ... the latest coordinates we were given was all very accurate."

Stone could even see the direction the Raindancer crew was drifting.

As they neared the dinghy and lifeboat, they spotted a beacon and a flare and the crews communicated via radio.

Stone said getting the others off the dinghy wasn't as hard as he anticipated.

"Luckily, because we have a lot of capable people on our boat and they're very capable as well, everyone physically was able to just like jump onto the back of the boat," he said.

Rick Rodriguez, the captain of the Raindancer, told the Washington Post: “I feel very lucky, and grateful, that we were rescued so quickly. We were in the right place at the right time to go down.”

Stone also expressed his good fortune with being able to play a role in saving others, providing food, showers and safety for a crew in need.

"It's my dream to make it back to Florida" where the trip began, Stone said. "But I've already got enough of this dream already. If we don't make it to Florida, that's OK with me."

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale

Four people aboard the Raindancer were stranded in the Pacific Ocean for 10 hours

His circumstances sounded straight out of “Moby-Dick,” but Rick Rodriguez wasn’t kidding. In his first text messages from the life raft, he said he was in serious trouble.

“Tommy this is no joke,” he typed to his friend and fellow sailor Tommy Joyce. “We hit a whale and the ship went down.”

“Tell as many boats as you can,” Rodriguez also urged. “Battery is dangerously low.”

On March 13, Rodriguez and three friends were 13 days into what was expected to be a three-week crossing from the Galápagos to French Polynesia on his 44-foot sailboat, Raindancer. Rodriguez was on watch, and he and the others were eating a vegetarian pizza for lunch around 1:30 p.m. In an interview with The Washington Post later conducted via satellite phone, Rodriguez said the ship had good winds and was sailing at about 6 knots when he heard a terrific BANG!

“The second pizza had just come out of the oven, and I was dipping a slice into some ranch dressing,” he said. “The back half of the boat lifted violently upward and to starboard.”

The sinking itself took just 15 minutes, Rodriguez said. He and his friends managed to escape onto a life raft and a dinghy. The crew spent just 10 hours adrift, floating about nine miles before a civilian ship plucked them from the Pacific Ocean in a seamless predawn maneuver. A combination of experience, technology and luck contributed to a speedy rescue that separates the Raindancer from similar catastrophes .

“There was never really much fear that we were in danger,” Rodriguez said. “Everything was in control as much as it could be for a boat sinking.”

It wasn’t lost on Rodriguez that the story that inspired Herman Melville happened in the same region. The ship Essex was also heading west from the Galápagos when it was rammed by a sperm whale in 1820, leaving the captain and some crew to endure for roughly three months and to resort to cannibalism before being rescued.

Coast Guard saves overboard cruise passenger in ‘Thanksgiving miracle’

There have been about 1,200 reports of whales and boats colliding since a worldwide database launched in 2007, said Kate Wilson, a spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission. Collisions that cause significant damage are rare, the U.S. Coast Guard said, noting that the last rescue attributed to damage from a whale was the sinking of a 40-foot J-Boat in 2009 off Baja California, with that crew rescued by Coast Guard helicopter.

Alana Litz was the first to see what she now thinks was a Bryde’s whale as long as the boat. “I saw a massive whale off the port aft side with its side fin up in the air,” Litz said.

Rodriguez looked to see it bleeding from the upper third of its body as it slipped below the water.

Bianca Brateanu was below cooking and got thrown in the collision. She rushed up to the deck while looking to the starboard and saw a whale with a small dorsal fin 30 to 40 feet off that side, leading the group to wonder whether at least two whales were present.

Within five seconds of impact, an alarm went off indicating the bottom of the boat was filling with water, and Rodriguez could see it rushing in from the stern.

Water was already above the floor within minutes. Rodriguez made a mayday call on the VHF radio and set off the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB). The distress signal was picked up by officials in Peru, who alerted the U.S. Coast Guard District 11 in Alameda, Calif., which is in charge of U.S. vessels in the Pacific.

The crew launched the inflatable life raft, as well as the dinghy, then realized they needed to drop the sails, so that line attaching the life raft didn’t snap as it got dragged behind the still-moving Raindancer.

Rodriguez grabbed his snorkel gear and a tarp and jumped into the water to see whether he could plug the holes, but it was futile. The area near the propeller shaft was badly punched in, he said.

Meanwhile, the others had gathered safety equipment, emergency gear and food. In addition to bottled water, they filled “water bottles, tea kettles and pots” before the salt water rose above the sink, Rodriguez said.

“There was no emotion,” Rodriguez recalled. “While we were getting things done, we all had that feeling, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ but it didn’t keep us from doing what we needed to do and prepare ourselves to abandon ship.”

Rodriguez and Simon Fischer handed the items down to the women in the dinghy, but in the turmoil, they left a bag with their passports behind. They stepped into the water themselves just as the deck went under.

Rodriguez swam to the life raft, climbed in and looked back to see the last 10 feet of the mast sinking “at an unbelievable speed,” he said. As the Raindancer slipped away, he pulled a Leatherman from his pocket and cut the line that tethered the life raft to the boat after Litz noticed it was being pulled taut.

They escaped with enough water for about a week and with a device for catching rain, Rodriguez said. They had roughly three weeks worth of food, and a fishing pole.

The Raindancer “was well-equipped with safety equipment and multiple communication devices and had a trained crew to handle this open-ocean emergency until a rescue vessel arrived,” said Douglas Samp, U.S. Coast Guard Pacific area search and rescue program manager. He cautioned that new technology should not replace the use of an EPIRB, which has its own batteries.

Indeed, the one issue the crew faced was battery power. Their Iridium Go, a satellite WiFi hotspot, was charged to only 32 percent (dropping to 18 percent before the rescue). The phone that pairs with it was at 40 percent, and the external power bank was at 25 percent.

Rodriguez sent his first message to Joyce, who was sailing a boat on the same route about 180 miles behind. His second was to his brother, Roger, in Miami. He repeated most of what he had messaged to Joyce, adding: “Tell mom it’s going to be okay.”

Rodriguez’s confidence was earned. A 31-year-old from Tavernier, Fla., he had spent about 10 years working as a professional yacht captain, mate and engineer. He bought the Raindancer in 2021 and lived on her, putting sweat equity into getting the boat, built in 1976, ready for his dream trip.

Both he and Brateanu, 25, from Newcastle, England, have mariner survival training. Litz, 32, from Comox, British Columbia, was formerly a firefighter in the Canadian military. Fischer, 25, of Marsberg, Germany, had the least experience, but “is a very levelheaded guy,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez gave detailed information on their location and asked his brother to send a message via WhatsApp to Joyce, who has a Starlink internet connection that he checks more frequently than his Iridium Go. Because of his low battery, he told his brother that he was turning the unit off and would check it in two hours.

Rodriguez also activated a Globalstar SPOT tracker, which transmitted the position of the life raft every few minutes, and he broadcast a mayday call every hour using his VHF radio.

When he turned the Iridium Go back on at the scheduled time, there was a reply from Joyce: “We got you bud.”

As luck would have it, the Raindancer was sailing the same route as about two dozen boats participating in a round-the-world yachting rally called the World ARC. BoatWatch, a network of amateur radio operators that searches for people lost at sea, was also notified. And the urgent broadcast issued by the Coast Guard was answered by a commercial ship, Dong-A Maia, which said it was 90 miles to the south of Raindancer and was changing course.

“We have a bunch of boats coming. We got you brother,” Joyce typed.

“Can’t wait to see you guys,” Rodriguez replied.

Joyce told Rodriguez that the closest boat was “one day maximum.”

In fact, the closest boat was a 45-foot catamaran not in the rally. The Rolling Stones was only about 35 miles away. The captain, Geoff Stone, 42, of Muskego, Wis., had the mayday relayed to him by a friend sailing about 500 miles away. He communicated with Joyce via WhatsApp and with the Peruvian coast guard using a satellite phone to say they were heading to the last known coordinates.

In the nine hours it took to reach the life raft, Stone told The Post, he and the other three men on his boat were apprehensive about how the rescue was going to work.

“The seas weren’t terrible, but we’ve never done a search and rescue,” he said. He wasn’t sure whether they would be able to find the life raft without traveling back and forth.

He was surprised when Fischer spotted the Rolling Stones’ lights from about five miles away and made contact on the VHF radio.

Once it got closer, Rodriguez set off a parachute flare, then activated a personal beacon that transmits both GPS location and AIS (Automatic Identification System) to assist in the approach. Although the 820-foot Dong-A Maia, a Panamanian-flagged tanker, was standing by, it made more sense to be rescued by the smaller ship.

To board the Rolling Stones, the crew from the Raindancer transferred to the dinghy with a few essentials, then detached the life raft so it wouldn’t get caught in the boat’s propeller.

“We were 30 or 40 feet away when we started to make out each other’s figures. There was dead silence,” Rodriguez said. “They were curious what kind of emotional state we were in. We were curious who they were.”

“I yelled out howdy” to break the ice, he explained.

One by one, they jumped onto the transom. “All of a sudden, us four were sitting in this new boat with four strangers,” Rodriguez said.

The hungry sailors were given fresh bread, then were offered showers. The Rolling Stones crew gave their guests toothbrushes, deodorant and clothes. None even had shoes.

Rodriguez said he had tried not to think about losing his boat while the crisis was at hand. But, the first morning he woke up on Rolling Stones, it hit him. Not only had he lost his home and belongings, but he also felt as if he’d lost “a good friend.”

“I’ve worked so hard to be here, and have been dreaming of making landfall at the Bay of Virgins in the Marquesas on my own boat for about 10 years. And 1,000 nautical miles short, my boat sinks,” Rodriguez said.

The Rolling Stones is expected to arrive in French Polynesia on Wednesday, and Rodriguez is glad that he’s onboard.

“I feel very lucky and grateful that we were rescued so quickly,” he said. “We were in the right place at the right time to go down.”

Karen Schwartz is a writer based in Fort Collins, Colo. Follow her on Twitter @WanderWomanIsMe .

A previous version of this article misstated the size of the J-boat that sank in 2009. It was 40 feet.

More travel news

How we travel now: More people are taking booze-free trips — and airlines and hotels are taking note. Some couples are ditching the traditional honeymoon for a “buddymoon” with their pals. Interested? Here are the best tools for making a group trip work.

Bad behavior: Entitled tourists are running amok, defacing the Colosseum , getting rowdy in Bali and messing with wild animals in national parks. Some destinations are fighting back with public awareness campaigns — or just by telling out-of-control visitors to stay away .

Safety concerns: A door blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet, leaving passengers traumatized — but without serious injuries. The ordeal led to widespread flight cancellations after the jet was grounded, and some travelers have taken steps to avoid the plane in the future. The incident has also sparked a fresh discussion about whether it’s safe to fly with a baby on your lap .

After giant whale sinks boat in the Pacific, Tennessee man helps with the rescue

Tommy Joyce was talking to his dad when an unknown number appeared on his phone.  

Moments later, the phone call with his father was dropped.

The spotty signal was expected, though. His father was in Dickson County, and Joyce was in the South Pacific, aboard a 45-foot sailboat named Southern Cross, halfway between the Galapagos Islands and French Polynesia, along with his wife, Katelyn, and friend Natalie Rudman. 

Joyce decided to call the unknown number back. 

Someone answered. He immediately heard an excited voice, uttering words he still remembers.

“You are friends with my brother Rick from Raindancer," the voice said. "This is not a joke, Raindancer just sank. They hit a whale and the boat sank. Rick says you know what to do.” 

Rick Rodriguez and three friends were on board Raindancer, on the same route as Southern Cross. They were “buddy boating,” to use sailing parlance. 

Joyce sent a message to Rodriguez: "We got you bud." 

The crew believes a Bryde’s whale crashed into Rodriguez’s boat . As the sailboat started to sink, the crew quickly grabbed supplies and boarded a lifeboat and dinghy. 

The Southern Cross was just under 200 miles away at the time. 

"As soon as we learned about the situation, we put a post on Facebook and set up a WhatsApp group," Joyce told The Tennessean. "Tried to contact every single boat they could." 

The story of the rescue has made national news.

“The sailing community is so tight," said Joyce, who is still sailing in the Pacific. "Everyone is trying to help everyone else." 

The closest boat was a 45-foot catamaran named Rolling Stones , captained by Geoff Stone. Stone’s brother saw a post in the social media group about the sinking boat. They changed course to help.

After 10 hours adrift in a lifeboat, the passengers from the Raindancer boarded the Rolling Stones.

‘Always wanted to do this big trip’

Joyce grew up in Dickson County, and his family owns Middle Tennessee Lumber. He was deputy assistant secretary for global energy security and multilateral engagement at the U.S Department of Energy until early 2021 when a new administration took office.

The Joyces saw an opportunity during the presidential transition. 

“We had always wanted to do this big trip,” Joyce said. 

So the couple set off on an adventure at sea. Along the way, they met Rudman, a freediving record holder from South Africa who teaches freediving and yoga in the Caribbean. 

Joyce, who is 40, said he reached his milestone birthday while crossing through the Panama Canal. 

Joyce said they have spotted whales during the trip. They’ve literally knocked on wood when talking about it, hoping to keep their distance. 

“We’ve seen a few in the Galapagos," he said. "We saw two a couple days after we left.”

Another emergency 

The whale wreck wasn’t the only issue the Joyces have encountered. 

About three days after the Raindancer went down, the Joyces heard another mayday call about a man who suffered a stroke on a boat.  

Joyce credits the power of the SpaceX-backed Starlink internet service for providing immediate communication in the Pacific. 

“This is out of the ordinary" he said. "We have a satellite internet that’s fast for the first time ever.” 

Once again, the Southern Cross crew began reaching out to nearby boats through social media and other methods.

“They were running out of fuel,” Joyce said. 

Ultimately, another boat rescued the man and brought him to shore. 

Joyce's father, Bill Joyce said the family worries about their son and daughter-in-law at sea. But they're able to temper their concern, knowing they are skilled sailors.

"When you are a parent and your children are at sea or war or battling some illness you spend a lot of time praying for their welfare," Joyce said. "We couldn’t be prouder of Tommy and Katelyn and their crew member Natalie in facilitating the rescue of their four friends on the Raindancer."

The crew has been sailing for more than three straight weeks now. But it won't be much longer before they complete their 3,000-nautical-mile journey to French Marquesas in French Polynesia. 

Tommy Joyce said they doesn’t expect to stop there. His crew has  chronicled much of the trip in a blog .

“Then we'll continue heading west to New Zealand or Australia,” Joyce said.

latest in US News

Thomas Matthew Crooks threatened to 'shoot up' high school...

Melania Trump makes entrance at RNC, glows as crowd welcomes her...

Joe Biden can’t stop bashing the press as his political career...

Hulk Hogan tears off shirt to reveal Trump-Vance tank top in...

Trump honoring slain retired firefighter Corey Comperatore by...

Jon Tester becomes the second Dem senator to tell Biden to step...

Mom who jumped to her death at daughter's Ohio University...

Trump attorney Alina Habba chokes up while discussing 'friend'...

4 pals spend 10 hours adrift in pacific ocean after whale sinks their boat.

• View Author Archive
• Email the Author
• Follow on X
• Get author RSS feed

Contact The Author

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

A giant whale plunged a group of sailors into a scene straight out of “Moby-Dick” when it sank their boat in the Pacific Ocean — where they waited in a life raft for 10 hours before they were rescued.

Rick Rodriguez, 31, of Tavernier, Florida, and three pals set off from the Galápagos Islands on his 44-foot sailboat Raindancer for a three-week, 3,500-mile journey to French Polynesia, the Washington Post reported .

But on March 13, less than two weeks into the trip, things went horribly wrong.

Rodriguez, a native of Newcastle, England, and the others were enjoying a lunch of vegetarian pizza when they heard a loud noise about 1:30 p.m.

“The second pizza had just come out of the oven, and I was dipping a slice into some ranch dressing,” Rodriguez told the paper over a satellite phone. “The back half of the boat lifted violently upward and to starboard.”

The group quickly gathered essential supplies, including water and food – then scrambled into a life raft and dinghy before the boat sank in about 15 minutes.

Rodriguez made a mayday and set off the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, whose signal was picked up by officials in Peru, who alerted the US Coast Guard in California.

Fortunately, the group also had an Iridium Go satellite WiFi hotspot and a phone, though they were only partially charged and an external battery pack was only at 25 percent, the Washington Post said.

“Tommy this is no joke,” Rodriguez messaged his friend Tommy Joyce, who was sailing the same route but was some 180 miles behind.

“We hit a whale and the ship went down. Tell as many boats as you can. Battery is dangerously low,” he typed.

Rodriguez sent a similar message to his brother Roger in Miami.

“Tell mom it’s going to be OK,” he added confidently.

When he checked the Iridium Go later, he saw Joyce’s reassuring message: “We got you bud. We have a bunch of boats coming.”

Rodriguez replied: “Can’t wait to see you guys.”

The Raindancer happened to be sailing the same route as about two dozen other vessels taking part in a yachting rally called the World ARC.

An alert sent by the Coast Guard was picked up by the Dong-A Maia, a Panamanian-flagged tanker sailing 90 miles to the south of Raindancer. It quickly changed course.

The sailors, who were thrown by the large impact, all noticed that a whale had rammed their boat.

“I saw a massive whale off the port aft side with its side fin up in the air,” Alana Litz, 32, a former firefighter in the Canadian military, told the news outlet.

She said she believes it was a Bryde’s whale that was about as long as the vessel.

Rodriguez noticed that it was bleeding as it slipped below the surface.

Bianca Brateanu, a 25-year-old from Newcastle, had been cooking below at the time of the collision and rushed up to see a whale at starboard, leading the group to wonder if at least two whales were present.

Also onboard was Simon Fischer, 25, of Marsberg, Germany, who had the least experience but “is a very levelheaded guy,” Rodriguez told the Washington Post.

The friends abandoned the Raindancer with enough water for about a week and roughly three weeks’ worth of food. They also had a fishing pole and a device for collecting rain.

But the rescue came after about 10 hours.

The Rolling Stones, a 45-foot catamaran captained by Wisconsin native Geoff Stone, was only about 35 miles away and he received a relayed mayday call.

Stone communicated with Joyce and with Peruvian authorities via WhatsApp to say he was heading to the last known location, which he reached a few hours later.

“The seas weren’t terrible but we’ve never done a search and rescue,” he told the Washington Post, adding that Fischer spotted his lights from about five miles away.

Rodriguez set off a flare and activated a beacon to assist in the final approach.

Although the Dong-A Maia also was nearby, the friends decided to board The Rolling Stones.

“We were 30 or 40 feet away when we started to make out each other’s figures. There was dead silence,” Rodriguez said.

“They were curious what kind of emotional state we were in. We were curious who they were. I yelled out ‘howdy” to break the ice,” he told the paper.

“All of a sudden us four were sitting in this new boat with four strangers,” Rodriguez added.

He told the outlet that “there was never really much fear that we were in danger. Everything was in control as much as it could be for a boat sinking.”

It also wasn’t lost on him that the story that inspired Herman Melville to write the 1851 novel happened in the same area.

The ship Essex also was sailing west from the Galápagos in 1820 when it was rammed by a sperm whale, leaving the captain and some crew members to spend about three months adrift as they resorted to cannibalism before being rescued.

Fortunately, Rodriguez and his friends didn’t have to face such an unsavory outcome.

“I feel very lucky, and grateful, that we were rescued so quickly,” he told the paper. “We were in the right place at the right time to go down.”

The Rolling Stones was expected to arrive in French Polynesia on Wednesday.

Advertisement

Main Content

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Fitness & Wellbeing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance Deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Dramatic video shows humpback whale landing on small boat: ‘It was insane’

The 19-ft fishing vessel sustained minimal damage and there were no injuries reported by the two people on board during the splash, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday

Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the us, thanks for signing up to the evening headlines email.

Video footage captured the shocking moment that a humpback whale burst through the water in Massachusetts and landed facedown on an unsuspecting fisherman’s deck.

On Sunday at around 10am local time, Plymouth Harbormaster Chad Hunter says that the giant mammal was seen splashing around close to moored boats off the coast of White Horse Beach in Cape Cod Bay, according to NBC 10 Boston .

The 19-ft fishing vessel reportedly incurred a minimal amount of damage to the bow of the boat and was able to return to shore without the need of assistance.

There were two people onboard the vessel at the time of the big splash, and neither reported any injuries from the incident.

“The Plymouth Harbormaster Department recommends a distance of at least 100 yards to minimize potential interactions with whales,” said Plymouth officials in a Facebook post after the incident. “This interaction, while rare, is a reminder that these interactions can be dangerous for both boaters and whales.”

Witnesses who saw the splash unfold told NBC 10 that they’d never encountered a sight such as the one they were treated to on Sunday.

“All of a sudden, full breach, ten feet out of the water, slams on top of his guy’s boat, like his bow goes down, basically, into the water, engine out, full thing pops off, whale rolls over the side of it, totally fine, but his boat was messed up,” Ryder Parkhurst told the local news station.

“It was insane, the guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Pops up, bang...right on the bow of the guy’s boat,” he said, adding that he “saw the boat go freaking flying, it was crazy.”

The Massachusetts Environmental Police are reportedly investigating the incident as well, according to WCVB.

The area where the breaching occurred on Sunday has become a hotspot for spotting humpback whales in recent weeks, with several sightings being reported over the last month.

Humpback whales, which can measure up to 55 ft and weigh up to 40 tonnes, pictured at this shoreline are oftentimes engaged in what’s called “lunge feeding.” The Whale & Dolphin Conservation group describes this as when the mammals bait fish by gulping large mouthfuls of water to corral fish into their mouths.

Just last week, a paddleboarder at Manomet Point, located just 1.5 miles down the beach from where the breaching occurred on Sunday, was treated to the sighting of a humpback whale bursting out of the water just metres away from where he stood.

"The thing comes out of the water, thing is like 25 ft in the air, there’s fish flying out of its mouth,” Michael Manfredi told WCVB last week. “It’s just amazing, it’s incredible. It’s just one of those moments you’ll never forget.”

The paddleboarder added that he “was so happy when I got home.” Fortunately, photographer Craig Picariello was nearby and managed to snap a picture of the pair on the water in the rare moment, helping cement the memory Mr Manfredi is likely to not forget to permanent art.

“He just seemed to be at the right place at the right time, so I kind of just followed him, and that’s where I got the pictures. It was crazy,” Mr Picariello told WCVB after snapping the iconic picture.

Humpback whales are found around the world, but the groups that are found frequenting the Massachusetts shores are part of the Western North Atlantic Humpback population. The mammals are classified as an Endangered species in Massachusetts, as there remain about 10,000, with 5,700 frequenting the western North Atlantic, according to the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife.

The humpback whale, its food resources – such as shrimp-like crustaceans (krill) and small fish – and its habitat are all threatened by human-influenced factors, such as pollution, entanglement with fishing gear and crashing with fishing vessels.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

CMA CGM Container Ship Loses 44 Containers Off South African Coasts

The Fall of a Giant: The Francis Scott Key Bridge from Glory to Collapse

• Facts and Figures

35 Somali Pirates Surrender: INS Kolkata’s Strategic Triumph 2600km from Indian Coast

Pirates Seize Control: Bangladesh-Flagged MV Abdullah Held Hostage Off Somali Coast

• Zuwara Boat Disaster
• Zumwalt destroyers
• zero emission tanker
• zero emission ships
• Zero alcohol policy
• zephyr lumos collision
• zephyr lumos
• yuan hua hu news
• yuan hua hu
• YM Series Ships

Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after whale sinks ship

Rick Rodriguez and his three friends were 13 days into their three-week crossing from the Galapagos to French Polynesia on his 44-foot sailboat, Raindancer, when disaster struck on March 13. Rodriguez was on watch, and the crew were eating lunch around 1:30 p.m. when they heard a loud bang. In an interview with The Washington Post, Rodriguez explained that the ship had good winds and was sailing at around 6 knots when the back half of the boat lifted violently upward and to starboard. The ship had hit a whale, and the Raindancer began to sink.

Rodriguez immediately texted his friend and fellow sailor, Tommy Joyce, telling him that they were in serious trouble and to tell as many boats as he could. The crew managed to escape onto a lifeboat and a dinghy, and the sinking took just 15 minutes. They were adrift for 10 hours, floating about nine miles, before a civilian ship rescued them from the Pacific Ocean. The rescue was a seamless predawn maneuver, thanks to a combination of experience, technology, and luck, and the crew was unharmed.

Rodriguez pointed out that the story that inspired Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” happened in the same region. The ship Essex was also heading west from the Galapagos when it was rammed by a sperm whale in 1820; leaving the captain and some crew to endure roughly three months and resort to cannibalism before being rescued. According to Kate Wilson, a spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission, there have been about 1,200 reports of whales and boats colliding since a worldwide database launched in 2007. Collisions that cause significant damage are rare, the U.S. Coast Guard said, noting the last rescue attributed to damage from a whale was the sinking of a 120-foot J-Boat in 2009 off Baja California, with that crew rescued by Coast Guard helicopter.

Share this:

• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Dougal Robertson and family spent 37 days adrift due to being sunk by whales in the same area. Read his book Survive the Savage Sea. Good book.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Related Posts

AMSA To Ensure Seafarers Serve No Longer Than Pre-COVID-19 Maximum Period Onboard

NYK Container Ship on Fire off San Francisco, USCG Responds

Passenger Vessel Arrested For Suspected Involvement in Maritime Piracy

Russian Shipping Credit Operations seized by banks

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

2 Yacht Passengers Rescued After Whales Sink Their Boat in Growing Trend That Has Scientists Divided

Reports of aggressive encounters between orcas and sailboats on the Iberian coast off of Europe began in 2020 and have ramped up since then

Orcas have sunk another yacht off the Strait of Gibraltar — the latest incident in a growing trend that initially began in 2020.

A sailing yacht went down in Moroccan waters in the Strait of Gibraltar after an unknown number of orcas repeatedly rammed into it, according to BBC , NBC News and Fox News .

At around 9 a.m. local time on Sunday, May 12, a pair of crew members aboard the vessel, Alboran Cognac, reported that orcas damaged their yacht, which had been about 14 miles from Cape Spartel in Morocco at the time, Fox News reported.

Spain's maritime rescue service told BBC that the two passengers called for help after they felt something hit the hull and rudder, which caused the yacht to take on water. 

A helicopter was sent by Spain's maritime rescue service to the location to rescue the crew members and a nearby oil tanker was also redirected to their location to provide assistance. The oil tanker was able to respond quickly and the two crew members were taken onboard and transported safely to Gibraltar, per the outlets.

Meanwhile, the crew members’ sailing yacht was left adrift and eventually sunk into the ocean. 

Reports of aggressive encounters between orcas and sailboats in the Iberian coast off of Europe began in 2020, according to Maritime Executive , and the incidents have ramped up since then.

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The reason behind the growing number of boat attacks by orcas in the area has perplexed researchers, though some have theorized that the killer whales were taught this behavior by other members of their species. 

Alfredo López Fernandez, a marine biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, told Live Science he believed the interactions began after one orca, called "White Gladis," who had been “traumatized’ by an incident with a vessel and “started this behavior of physical contact" with boats. He said other killer whales then copied it.

Scientists from research center CIRCE noted that a group of three orcas from the same pod have been involved in several boat rudder interactions, though they added that they believed the orcas were "engaging with sailboats as a form of entertainment" rather than a form of hunting.

Marine biologist Dr. Renaud de Stephanis told the BBC, “From what I’m seeing, it’s mainly two of those guys [the Gladises] in particular that are just going crazy. They just play, play and play. . . . It just seems to be something they really like and that’s it.”

“I’ve seen them hunting,” the biologist added. “When they hunt, you don’t hear or see them. They are stealthy, they sneak up on their prey. I’ve seen them attacking sperm whales - that’s aggressive....but these guys, they are playing."

Related Articles

• Advertising
• Find the Magazine
• Good Jibes Podcast
• Boat In Dining
• Sailboat Charters
• Business News
• Working Waterfront
• Youth Sailing

• General Sailing
• Current News

Sailboat Sinks After Collision with Whale in South Pacific

It was like an excerpt from a Herman Melville book: “Vessel has sunk. They were hit by a whale.” Those words were shared across social media channels on Monday as sailors networked to send aid to the stricken crew of Raindancer (we believe a Kelly Peterson 44). Also in the shared post were the words “Not a drill.”

The post was created by Tommy Joyce, a member of Facebook’s “Starlink on Boats” group. Tommy is a friend of Raindancer ‘s owner, Rick Rodriguez, and was alerting the boating community to the situation. “They hit [have] a liferaft and have Iridium on board.”

They were almost in the middle of the Pacific with no other boats in sight. But a successful rescue was coordinated through the power of social media and modern communications, including new kid on the block Starlink.

We contacted Paul Tetlow, managing director of World Cruising Club, who is operating as “rally control” for the World ARC cruising rally. He told us that upon learning of Raindancer ‘s demise and the position of the crew, he contacted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) who then assigned MRCC Peru to coordinate the rescue. But before the official rescue had been executed, a network of communications had quickly arisen, much of it via Starlink, and around eight ARC vessels diverted their course to assist Raindancer ‘s crew. Along the way, ARC participants aboard S/V Far were able to keep up the communications with the lifeboat using Iridium and Starlink.

Here’s what we understand about the incident. Raindancer was “13 days into a 20-22-day, 3000nm ocean crossing,” Vinny Mattiola wrote on Facebook, when the vessel was struck by a whale, which “damaged the skeg and prop strut, and the boat was completely underwater in <15mins, forcing all four crew to abandon into the life raft.” They were approximately midway between the Galápagos and French Polynesia.

Fortunately the crew were cool-headed and quickly loaded the raft with water, provisions, and emergency communications and survival equipment, and secured Raindancer ‘s dinghy alongside. Mattiola believes the crew’s Iridium GO! device, which they carried along with their SPOT tracker, was instrumental in their rescue.

Within 10 hours of Raindancer going under, her four crew were rescued and taken aboard the sailing vessel Rolling Stones . “A very quick response time,” Tetlow said. “A good achievement.” Tetlow believes Starlink adds “another layer of ability to solve problems quickly,” and that the Starlink communications probably did add to the expedience of the rescue.

According to reports, the boat’s EPIRB hadn’t worked as intended, but the US Coast Guard later confirmed that it had indeed worked, the crew just “didn’t know it.”  When we learned of Raindancer ‘s distress, we contacted Douglas Samp, USCG Search and Rescue Program Manager for the Pacific, and Kevin Cooper, Search and Rescue Program Manager, Hawaii, who were already coordinating rescue with MRCC Peru. Samp later explained, “There is no country in the world that has SAR resources able to respond 2400 miles offshore, so we rely upon other vessels to assist. RCC Alameda assisted MRCC Peru with a satellite broadcast to GMDSS-equipped vessels and diverted an AMVER (Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue) vessel, M/V DONG-A MAIA , to assist, but the Rolling Stones got there first. BZ to your sailing community for rescuing your own.”

Mattiola concluded his post: “All crew are safe and even sent me a voice message thanking everyone involved.”

We hope to share more about this story in the next issue of Latitude 38 .

*Editor’s note: Upon learning the full details of this story, the headline was changed from Sailboat Sinks After Being Rammed By Whale in South Pacific to Sailboat Sinks After Collision with Whale in South Pacific.

29 Comments

Seems the whales are trying to get even.

So glad everybody is safe! Kudos to the rescue team

It would be an interesting study to determine if there’s a correlation between whale strikes and the color of bottom paint.

A bit over the top on the title. “Rammed”? Really. Rammed implies the whale was trying to damage the boat. Do we even know if the boat hit the whale rather than the whale hitting the boat?

Exactly what I was thinking

The boat hit the whale. To say the opposite is just incorrect. Bad reporting.

The whale struck the boat. Scientists believe they associate boats in that area with whaling. Same thing happened around that area about a year ago.

This may have to go to litigation. Some say the whale was double-parked with one taillight out when the Pacific highway was busy with the World ARC Rally, PPJ Rally and other westward-bound cruisers.

It is roughly where the whaling ship Essex, which sailed from Nantucket, was sunk in November of 1820 when it was rammed/attacked by a vengeful sperm whale. The story laid the foundation for Herman Melville’s book ‘Moby Dick.’ The actual story of the sinking of the Essex is told in a great book by Nathaniel Philbrick in his book, “The Heart of the Sea.” Once again the whale didn’t get to tell their side of the story but it certainly might have included the fact that the whaling ship was out there trying to kill it. In 1820 whaling ships were starting to hunt for whales to the west of the Galapagos after major populations of whales in the Atlantic had been depleted. Moby Dick and The Heart of the Sea are both worth a read. Have a look in the Latitude 38 bookstore: https://bookshop.org/shop/latitude38

Hi John, Even if the whale did hit the boat (which is a really hard thing to determine at sea), using the word ‘rammed’ implies intent. And, except for the orca problems off of Gibraltar, and Moby Dick, I don’t think we can attribute intention to the whale. It just sounds sensational.

As for whales associating boats in that area with whaling… that’s a hard one to believe. Many thousands of boats have sailed safely through that area since whaling was banned.

Cheers, Bruce

Oh, and by the way, I thought the movie THE HEART OF THE SEA was excellent. One of the few sailing films that treated the sailing parts realistically. They were never turning the wheel to port and the ship would go starboard!

I was also thinking ? the same thing. Striking a whale that was “perhaps” (I don’t know) resting or sleeping, is completely different than rammed. That infers they were attacked.

As an aside. In their posts the crew have used the terminology that their boat hit the whale. Not that the whale hit them, or attacked them. This is verbiage used by other sailors.

It’s always heartwarming to hear that all survived. And yes, let’s not Moby Dick the whale, before we hear the whole story.

They said the whale hit the”skeg and prop strut” like they didn’t hit the whale, read the !@#$%^& message, I’m curious as to what species it was; the Galapagos islands area has a history of Orcas attacks.

The book “Survive the Savage Sea” by Dougal Robertson comes to mind. Similar situation and location aboard 43ft schooner “Lucette” in the year 1972.

I think it was reported other way round, the boat hit the whale who was sleeping on surface and crew didnt spot him.

Hope the whale is unhurt.

I hope so also??as stated above they maybe trying to get even,if so they got a long way to go

Regarding the incident and life-saving equipment referenced , can anyone remark about range instruments (existing or future planned) that can monitor/detect massive underwater objects (e.g. our beloved whales) ? I’ve crossed the seas, racing and deliveries; and such an event never occurred to me. Thanks

Everyone is so concerned about who hit who but do we know what kind of whale? Is it ok? Was it properly called in to authorities to try and see if it’s a tagged whale they might be able to check up on?

Good point! The collision must have done a number on the whale too.

One crew member saw the whale immediately after the collision, and believed it to be a Bryde’s whale. This would make sense as the species is highly sensitive to disturbances. She reported that the whale appeared to be bleeding. KP44’s are strong hulls and the area around the skeg/rudder post was caved in, which caused the vessel to sink in 15 minutes.

A sad business all the way around .

CLICKBAIT !!! The whale didn’t “ram” the boat… FFS !!

Sounds to me like the whale was surfacing from a dive and hit the propeller, which in turn, caused the damage to the fibergass where the shaft exited the hull. Using the word rammed is for publicity, and distorts the facts.

For those who wish to help the Captain and the crew in these tragic events https://gofund.me/c576a554

No insurance?

Shocking headline to catch readers but untrue. Read the skippers report- the boat collided with the whale which was seen swimming off in a trail of blood.

There is also the Theory that “Herd Bull” whales will protect their group by challenging intruders, just as large mammals on land will do.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Notify me via e-mail if anyone answers my comment.

Sailing for Your Ears Good Jibes #82: Andy Schwenk on Surviving a Scare Andy is a longtime Express 37 sailor, Bay Area marine surveyor, and Richmond Yacht Club port captain who has truly seen it all.

Sponsored Post New Year’s Special at San Francisco BoatWorks New Year's Special! 50% haul & launch with bottom paint. Call (415) 626-3275 for more information or visit www.sfboatworks.com.

Colleges Winning in Keelboats University of Hawaii Wins Port of Los Angeles Harbor Cup Collegiate keelboat racing is alive and well with the Port of Los Angeles-sponsored Port of L.A. Harbor Cup.

More Than A Vacation Chartered Bavaria 50 Used in Bombing of Nord Stream Pipeline? A chartered Bavaria 50 is alleged to have taken part in planting the explosives that ruptured the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

Sponsored Post Need Fast, Reliable Internet On Your Boat? Our high-speed fixed wireless base stations and private Bay Area fiber ring offer the reliability, redundancy, and resiliency needed to keep you online, no matter where you call home!

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

‘Absolutely incredible’: Man rowing solo across Atlantic is surrounded by whales

Bill Chappell

Tom Waddington, who is rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, filmed an hours-long encounter with what he believes were long-finned pilot whales. He enjoyed their visit — until one smacked into his small boat. @tomwaddington_skier hide caption

Tom Waddington is on a quest to row across the Atlantic Ocean all by himself — but on Sunday, he found plenty of company at sea, when a pod of pilot whales thronged around him. They followed him for hours, growing from a few playful animals to hundreds of large creatures. At least one smacked into his small boat.

The whales popped their heads above the surface and seemed to play together — a gam of whales , gadding about — as Waddington, who is rowing some 2,000 nautical miles from the Newfoundland coast to Penzance, in the United Kingdom, watched in amazement.

“This is so cool,” Waddington said as he took a video of the whales’ antics. With a laugh, he added, “I love it, but I'm scared they're gonna hit my rudder.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tom Waddington (@tomwaddington_skier)

Waddington emerged unscathed — but a little shaken by the risks mammals weighing thousands of pounds can pose to his boat and equipment on an unsupported solo trip.

“They were just playing and going under the boat and I was taking videos,” he said on Facebook and Instagram, describing hundreds of whales around him. Then one of the whales slammed into the side of his light boat.

“And I was like, Oh my God. And suddenly it turned from David Attenborough into Moby Dick. And I was really scared.”

Waddington’s team on land believes the playful mammals are long-finned pilot whales, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says are known to live in the North Atlantic and “are very social, living in large schools of hundreds of animals separated into close-knit pods of 10 to 20 individuals.”

The whales appeared at a moment when Waddington was feeling a bit low, he said, after a morning full of rain.

“What a special treat,” he said on the video. “I've seen loads of whales, but they've just come to say hello.”

When it came time to take leave of his visitors, Waddington says he wasn’t sure how to do that. He tried shouting a bit, and splashed his oars. He veered north — but the whales followed, and for more than two hours, it seemed more whales kept showing up.

Waddington, who works as a ski instructor, is rowing across the ocean for a fundraiser benefiting Mind , the British mental health charity led by the actor Stephen Fry. Waddington estimates that more than 1,000 whales swam with him. For advice, he called his coach, Charlie Pitcher (who has himself rowed across the Atlantic).

“He was like, the best thing to do is, be quiet and still — which is exactly the opposite of what I did" earlier, he said.

A map shows Tom Waddington's progress as he rows his boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Mind Oar Matter hide caption

Eventually, the whales left the boat and its sole occupant with a rare story about crossing the Grand Banks , the large fishery at the edge of the North American continental shelf.

“It was absolutely incredible,” Waddington said.

The encounter didn’t harm the boat, or its progress across open water.

Between favorable winds and waves, and what Waddington called “whale-fueled adrenaline,” his boat is making good progress, he added. You can track its voyage online .

Whale sinks boat in the Pacific

Four sailors say they’re lucky to be alive after a whale struck their boat, leaving them stranded for nearly 10 hours. abc news’ andrew dymburt reports., march 22, 2023, what’s next for russia, what comes next after texas school shooting, what's next for abortion rights in america, the new battle for voting rights, how we can build a clean and renewable future, the fight for kyiv, examining extremism in the military, gun violence: an american epidemic, border crisis: what’s happening at the us-mexico border, remembering george floyd: a year of protest, the source of covid-19: what we know, how did the gamestop stock spike on wall street happen, why are people hesitant to trust a covid-19 vaccine, how climate change and forest management make wildfires harder to contain, disparity in police response: black lives matter protests and capitol riot, 2020 in review: a year unlike any other, examined: how putin keeps power, why don’t the electoral college and popular vote always match up, us crosses 250,000 coronavirus deaths, 2nd impeachment trial: what this could mean for trump, presidential transition of power: examined, how donald trump spent his last days as president, how joe biden's inauguration will be different from previous years, belarus’ ongoing protests: examined, trump challenges the vote and takes legal action, 2020’s dnc and rnc are different than any before, what is happening with the usps, voting in 2020 during covid-19, disinformation in 2020, abc news specials on, impact x nightline: on the brink, impact x nightline: unboxing shein, the lady bird diaries, impact x nightline: it's britney, impact x nightline: natalee holloway -- a killer confesses, impact x nightline: who shot tupac, impact x nightline, power trip: those who seek power and those who chase them, the murders before the marathon, the ivana trump story: the first wife, mormon no more, leave no trace: a hidden history of the boy scouts, keeper of the ashes: the oklahoma girl scout murders, the orphans of covid: america's hidden toll, superstar: patrick swayze, the kardashians -- an abc news special, 24 months that changed the world, have you seen this man.