Whale Strike!
Lecure
Marcus & Ruth
Mon 3 Dec 2012 11:48
We all sat down today for lunch as normal, sandwiches, salad, crisps and Cokes, busy chatting away about the usual kind of things, weather, sea, rain, how nice and civilised it is on a catamaran, and then a thump! Not a normal sea induced thump, a more solid, what the hell was that kind of thump! No one said anything but everyone felt it. I was sat facing the rear and suddenly a HUGE whale tail came out the water directly behind our port transom. We all got up to take a look and what we saw was quite stunning. There were clearly more than one large whale on the surface of the water, at least one of which had taken a good whack from us, very quickly the water turned into a swirling bubbly mass of brownish colour, it was obvious that a lot of blood was being spilt. Our initial reactions were to check the condition of the boat as you hear and read plenty of stories of Whale collisions that don't end well, they tend to break fibre glass boats quiet easily, especially rudders. After a complete inspection we were happy all was well, the bilges were fine, the rudder looked good and the boat was cooking along happily.
On reflection I think we can take this as a very lucky escape, we've been around whales quite often over the years and always tried to remain at a safe distance to respect their size and our vulnerability should they accidentally strike us. To be doing 10 knots, take a good strike and get away with apparently no damage what so ever is lucky to say the least. Dicky says he's going to do the lottery when he gets home!