sailboat sunk by whale pacific

Friends' sailing adventure ends in a dramatic rescue after a whale sinks their boat in the Pacific

What started as a sailing adventure for one man and three of his friends ended in a dramatic rescue after a giant whale sank his boat, leaving the group stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for hours and with a tale that might just be stranger than fiction.

Rick Rodriguez and his friends had been on what was meant to be a weekslong crossing to French Polynesia on his sailboat, Raindancer, when the crisis unfolded just over a week ago.

They had been enjoying some pizza for lunch when they heard a loud bang.

"It just happened in an instant. It was just a very violent impact with some crazy-sounding noises and the whole boat shook," Rodriguez told NBC's "TODAY" show in an interview that aired Wednesday.

"It sounded like something broke and we immediately looked to the side and we saw a really big whale bleeding,” he said.

The impact was so severe that the boat's propeller was ruptured and the fiberglass around it shattered, sending the vessel into the ocean.

The friends are lucky to be alive after a giant whale sank their boat as they sailed across the Pacific Ocean.

As water began to rush into the boat, the group snapped into survival mode.

"There was just an incredible amount of water coming in, very fast," Rodriguez said.

Alana Litz, a member of the crew, described the ordeal as "surreal."

"Even when the boat was going down, I felt like it was just a scene out of a movie. Like everything was floating," she said.

Rodriguez and his friends acted fast, firing off mayday calls and text messages as they activated a life raft and dinghy.

He said he sent a text message to his brother Roger in Miami and to a friend, Tommy Joyce, who was sailing a "buddy boat" in the area as a safety measure.

“Tommy this is no joke," Rodriguez wrote in a text message. "We hit a whale and the ship went down."

"We are in the life raft," he texted his friend. "We need help *ASAP."

Raindancer sank within about 15 minutes, the group said. Their rescue took much longer that, with the four friends out on the open waters for roughly nine hours before they could be sure they would live to tell the tale.

Peruvian officials picked up the group's distress signal and the U.S. Coast Guard was alerted, with its District 11 in Alameda, California, being in charge of U.S. vessels in the Pacific.

Ultimately, it was another sailing vessel, the Rolling Stones, that came to the group's aid after Joyce shared the incident on a Facebook boat watch group.

Geoff Stone, captain of the Rolling Stones, said they were about 60 or 65 miles away when his crew members realized that their vessel was the closest boat.

After searching the waters, they were eventually able to locate the group of friends.

“We were shocked that we found them," Stone said.

The timing of the rescue, which unfolded at night, appeared to be critical as the Stones' crew members were able to see the light from the dinghy bobbing in the darkness.

Rodriguez lost his boat and the group of friends said they also lost their passports and many of their possessions, but they said they were just grateful to be alive.

The severity of the injuries sustained by the whale were not immediately clear.

Kate Wilson, a spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission, told The Washington Post, which first reported the story, that there have been about 1,200 reports of whales and boats colliding since a worldwide database launched in 2007.

Collisions causing significant damage are rare, the Coast Guard told the outlet. It noted that the last rescue attributed to impact from a whale was the sinking of a 40-foot J-Boat in 2009 off Baja California. The crew in that incident was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter.

One member of Raindancer's sailing crew, Bianca Brateanu, said the more recent incident, however harrowing, left her feeling more confident in her survival skills.

“This experience made me realize how, you know how capable we are, and how, how skilled we are to manage and cope with situations like this,” she said.

In an Instagram post, Rodriguez said he would remember his boat "for the rest of my life."

"What’s left of my home, the pictures on the wall, belongings, pizza in the oven, cameras, journals, all of it, will forever be preserved by the sea," he said.

"As for me, I had a temporary mistrust in the ocean. But I’m quickly realizing I’m still the same person," Rodriguez wrote. “I often think about the whale who likely lost its life, but is hopefully ok. I'm not sure what my next move will be. But my attraction to the sea hasn’t been shaken."

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

Sam Brock is an NBC News correspondent.

Share full article

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.

The Raindancer sailboat on the waters by San Cristóbal Island, which is part of the Galápagos near the coast of the Ecuador mainland, last month. Four people are on the boat on a clear day.

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..

A Venezuelan Exodus: About a quarter of the residents of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-largest city, have moved away due to economic misery and political repression. More are expected to soon follow .

Why Brazil Banned X: To combat disinformation, Brazil gave one judge broad power to police the internet. Now, after he blocked the social network, some are wondering whether that was a good idea .

How the Tories Lost Britain: Brexit and immigration upended their 14-year reign, setting the stage for a pitched battle to remake British conservatism .

Mexico’s Judiciary Rift: A showdown over a plan by Mexico’s outgoing president to reshape the country’s judiciary is raising fears over the effect on the rule of law and trade with the United States.

An Ancient Irish Game Adapts: For centuries, hurling’s wooden sticks have been made from Ireland’s ash trees. But with a disease destroying forests, the sport is turning to different materials .

Today's news
Reviews and deals
Climate change
2024 election
Newsletters
Fall allergies
Health news
Mental health
Sexual health
Family health
So mini ways
Unapologetically
Buying guides
Labor Day sales

Entertainment

How to Watch
My watchlist
Stock market
Biden economy
Personal finance
Stocks: most active
Stocks: gainers
Stocks: losers
Trending tickers
World indices
US Treasury bonds
Top mutual funds
Highest open interest
Highest implied volatility
Currency converter
Basic materials
Communication services
Consumer cyclical
Consumer defensive
Financial services
Industrials
Real estate
Mutual funds
Credit cards
Balance transfer cards
Cash back cards
Rewards cards
Travel cards
Online checking
High-yield savings
Money market
Home equity loan
Personal loans
Student loans
Options pit
Fantasy football
Pro Pick 'Em
College Pick 'Em
Fantasy baseball
Fantasy hockey
Fantasy basketball
Download the app
Daily fantasy
Scores and schedules
GameChannel
World Baseball Classic
Premier League
CONCACAF League
Champions League
Motorsports
Horse racing

New on Yahoo

Privacy Dashboard

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.

"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.

Read the original article on Insider

Chicago Sky's Diamond DeShields responds to toxic fan after hard foul on Caitlin Clark

An incident involving Cailtin Clark and the Sky got ugly. Again.

3 smart things to do when your savings account hits $10,000

Saving up $10,000 is a big accomplishment. But how you use that money is also important. Here’s what you can do with $10,000 in savings to improve your financial situation further.

Padres lose crusher to Tigers, giving up grand slam with 2 outs and 2 strikes in 9th inning

The San Diego Padres lost a game to the Detroit Tigers on Thursday in which they were one out and one strike away from winning a game that could be crucial in a playoff race.

Only Amazon Prime members can score these 7 secret deals, starting at just $9

Insider-only bargains include a $20 water flosser (that's 50% off) and $25 off a Samsonite carry-on with a 16,000-person fan club.

Data Dump Wednesday: 10 stats you need to know for Week 1 | Yahoo Fantasy Forecast

Week 1 has arrived and so has our new Wednesday show. Matt Harmon and Sal Vetri debut 'Data Dump Wednesday' by sharing 10 data points you need to know for Week 1 to maximize your fantasy lineups.

Caitlin Clark notches 2nd triple-double, creates 200-assist, 100 3-pointer club in Fever win

Clark is on pace for the most assists ever and the third-most 3-pointers ever.

The US economy may be on 'thinner' ice than investors think

Investors are increasingly confident the US economy will achieve a "soft landing." That may not be the case, according to one strategist.

Carrie Underwood, 'Sunday Night Football' producers lift the lid on this year's 'very different' show open and how the singer took over for Faith Hill, Pink (exclusive)

Carrie Underwood and the NBC Sports team take Yahoo Entertainment behind the scenes of this year's "Sunday Night Football" show open.

Deion Sanders wonders why Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders didn't get more Week 1 recognition

Colorado beat FCS school North Dakota State 31-26 in Week 1.

The iOS 18 release date is this month but is your iPhone compatible? Here are the eligible devices and new features

Apple's latest software, including Apple Intelligence features, won't be available for every iPhone user. We'll explain who's getting left out this year.

Mortgage and refinance rates today, September 4, 2024: 30-year fixed still under 6%

These are today's mortgage and refinance rates. Lock in your rate today. The 30-year fixed had been held under 6% for more than a full week. Lock in your rate today.

A Minecraft Movie trailer gives us our first look at Jason Momoa and Jack Black ahead of its 2025 release

It's finally coming to theaters.

Taylor Swift supports Travis Kelce at Chiefs-Ravens game after false breakup contract circulates. They're 'going strong,' says source

What breakup PR contract? Taylor Swift cheers on Travis Kelce at Chiefs home opener as source says they're "solid."

Ford recalls 90,736 vehicles due to engine valve issue

Ford will recall 90,736 vehicles as engine intake valves in the vehicles may break while driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

US Open: USA's Emma Navarro rallies from 5-1 second-set deficit, will face Aryna Sabalenka in semifinals

Navarro won the last six games of the match. She was the first of three Americans in quarterfinal play at the US Open on Tuesday.

Yankees have a closer problem, Justin Verlander's quest for 300 wins | Baseball Bar-B-Cast

Jake Mintz & Jordan Shusterman talk about the Yankees' closer problem with Clay Holmes, Shohei Ohtani returning to Anaheim, Ben Joyce throwing 105.5 and Justin Verlander’s quest for 300 career wins.

Researchers discover potentially catastrophic exploit present in AMD chips for decades

Researchers discovered a potentially catastrophic vulnerability in AMD chips that has been there for decades. It’s called a ‘Sinkclose’ flaw.

Gunnar Henderson passes Cal Ripken Jr., Miguel Tejada for most home runs in a season by an Orioles shortstop

Henderson earned his place alongside Orioles royalty on Wednesday.

2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoff preview, predictions: Will there be another first-time champion?

Ten of the 16 drivers in the playoff field are searching for their first Cup Series title. Joey Logano is the only playoff driver with multiple titles.

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
Climate 100
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
Wine Offers
Betting Sites

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

‘Tommy this is not a joke’: Friends send mayday message as boat sinks in Pacific after being hit by whale

Rick rodriguez and crew of three spent 10 hours on a lifeboat and dinghy after collision, 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.

A group of friends had to be rescued from the Pacific after their 44ft sailing boat sunk after being struck by a giant whale.

Rick Rodriguez and three friends spent 10 hours on a lifeboat and dinghy after the bizarre reported accident took place on 13 March.

Mr Rodriguez, who is from Florida, was 13 days into a three-week and 3,500-mile crossing of the South Pacific from the Galápagos Islands to French Polynesia when the whale collision took place.

He told The Washington Post that he had been eating vegetarian pizza onboard the boat Raindancer when it ran into the huge whale.

“The second pizza had just come out of the oven, and I was dipping a slice into some ranch dressing,” Mr Rodriguez said in a satellite phone interview with the Post .

Judge wants plan to protect humpback whales from fishery

“The back half of the boat lifted violently upward and to starboard.”

Crew member Alana Litz added that following the collision she saw “a massive whale off the port aft side with its side fin up in the air.”

And within seconds alarms began sounding warning the group of friends that the boat was taking on water.

Mr Rodriguez says that he issued a mayday call on the boat’s VHF radio and sent out their position in an emergency distress signal. The crew then gathered enough food and water for around a week, as well as emergency equipment before launching the lifeboat and dinghy.

In the rush, they left their passports behind.

Using a phone and satellite hotspot, Mr Rodriquez messaged his friend and sailor Tommy Joyce, who was on the same route but around 180 miles behind them.

“Tommy this is no joke. We hit a whale and the ship went down,” Mr Rodriguez says he messaged his friend.

Sailors speak out after whale sinks boat in middle of Pacific

He also sent a message to his brother Roger urging him to: “Tell mom it’s going to be OK.”

He also asked his sibling to try to contact Mr Joyce on WhatsApp to try to reach him faster.

After turning the wifi hotspot off for two hours to conserve battery life, he finally received a message back from Mr Joyce, saying “We got you bud.”

The crew was eventually rescued hours later.

The Peruvian coast guard had picked up the distress signal and relayed the information to the US Coast Guard station in California.

But, in the end, it was another boat which reached the group first.

Rick Rodriguez says that he issued a mayday call on the boat’s VHF radio and sent out their position in an emergency distress signal

The Rolling Stones, captained by sailor Geoff Stone, had heard the mayday call from the Raindancer and coordinated with Mr Joyce and Peruvian officials.

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

While the crew of the Raindancer should have completed their journey on Wednesday – and had to say goodbye to the Raindancer – the group has no plans of quitting.

Now, they will complete their journey to French Polynesia onboard the Rolling Stones.

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:

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

My Independent Premium
Account details
Help centre

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 .

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.

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

"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.

Pacific Sailboat Crew Rescued After Abandoning Ship Sunk by Whale Collision

On March 13th, a party of companions had already been sailing for 13 days from the Galápagos to French Polynesia on the Raindancer, a 44-foot sailboat. Suddenly, they heard a loud noise, and Rick Rodriguez, the owner of the boat, was in the middle of enjoying some pizza when he felt the stern of the boat lift up and shift to starboard. It became apparent that they had struck a whale. The crew quickly inflated their lifeaft, and loaded their dinghy with essential supplies such as food, water, and communication equipment, and within 15 minutes, the Raindancer sunk beneath the waves.

After the collision with the whale and the Raindancer began to sink, Rick Rodriguez promptly sent out a mayday distress signal on the VHF radio. He and his companions then proceeded to evacuate onto the lifeboat and dinghy, taking essential supplies with them. In a report by The Washington Post, Rodriguez recounted that he and his friends felt a sense of disbelief and shock that this was happening, but they remained calm and focused on gathering what they needed to prepare for abandoning the ship. Despite the surreal situation, they managed to act efficiently and without much emotional turmoil, as Rodriguez stated: "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."

Following the evacuation, the crew of the Raindancer spent 10 hours adrift before being rescued by the civilian boat Rolling Stone. The rescue was described as seamless and efficient. The Raindancer was equipped with various communication devices and emergency equipment, and its crew was trained to handle worst-case scenarios. Despite these measures, collisions between whales and boats have been on the rise since 2007, with approximately 1,200 such incidents recorded to date. Alana Litz, one of the individuals on board the Raindancer, believes that the whale they struck was a Bryde's whale, and she and her companions observed the animal bleeding as it swam away.

Rodriguez expressed his gratitude for the swift rescue, stating: "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." Despite the unfortunate event, he and his companions were grateful to have made it out alive and credited their preparedness and training for helping them handle the situation as best they could.

For the full story visit The Washington Post .

Want to Stay In the Loop?

Stay up to date with the latest articles, news and all things boating with a FREE subscription to Marinalife Magazine!

latest in US News

Trump appears at Manhattan federal court as lawyers seek to...

Newlyweds charged with murdering their groomsman on their wedding...

Hunter Biden reveals why he stunningly pleaded guilty in $1.4M...

New audio reveals how Colt Gray's father reacted to police when...

Pets strut their stuff at NYFW charity show: 'They have very big...

Ga. shooting suspect warned he will face life in prison, dad sobs...

Biden trashes Trump in Wisconsin visit, comparing himself to FDR,...

Human remains believed to be hundreds of years old found on...

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

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.

Rick Rodriguez and Alana Litz in a dinghy

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.

Rick Rodriguez and Simon Fischer climbed into the life raft from the sunken Raindancer.

“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.

Rick Rodriguez and Alana Litz adrift in the Pacific

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.

Four Sailors Rescued from Liferaft after SV Raindancer Hit by Whale in South Pacific

May 23, 2023 | Resolved , Safety at Sea , Stories , Top Articles

Key Communications in An Offshore Rescue

By ann hoffner contributing editor ocean navigator magazine may/june 2023, short tacks, on march 13, on a south pacific crossing midway between galapagos and the marquesas, s/v raindancer with four people on board sank after an encounter with a whale. it was lunchtime and they had been in the cockpit eating pizza. in 15 minutes the boat, a peterson 44, had slipped beneath the surface and the crew were surveying a sunny sea from the slim shelter of a liferaft and inflatable dinghy tied together., before abandoning ship the crew gathered supplies and the captain, rick rodriguez, acti- vated an epirb and sent out a mayday on vhf., once in the liferaft they activated a globalstar spot tracker, started regular mayday signals via handheld vhf, and turned on an iridiumgo and cell phone (creating a satellite service wifi hot-spot) to mes- sage rick’s brother on land, and a friend on s/v southern cross sailing 160 nm behind., after sending brief messages they turned the devices off. the liferaft carried several weeks’ worth of vital provisions but their emergency signaling devices had precious little bat- tery power. two hours later on start-up there were messages. one, from tommy joyce on southern cross , said, “we got you bud.”, what the raindancer crew couldn’t know was that from the time the epirb went off, and rick’s text messages were received, two streams of rescue communications were started and they flowed and inter- twined throughout the nine hours it took for a rescue boat to find them., initial reports of the rescue were confused and shifting. in the new age of commu- nications this shouldn’t be a surprise; much was said on social media, especially on the facebook page of boatwatch, an organization that main- tains a worldwide network of resources to aid the search for missing or overdue mariners and relay urgent messages. according to eddie tuttle, boatwatch was alerted by don preuss, a cruiser in panama, that mayday messages were showing up on social media and their own facebook page became a central message platform. the use of social media allows information to be widely disseminated but also leads to a cacophony of voices, not all directly involved but all eager to participate. initially it was reported that raindancer’s epirb did not function, but that proved to be false, and the signal set off an official sar chain of command that began in peru and was rerouted through rescue coordination center (rcc) alameda in california, where the us coast guard fielded phone calls and coordinated via automated mutual-assistance vessel res- cue (amver) to divert a commercial ship to the liferaft., rick’s text messages set off another effort, one that ulti- mately led to the raindancer crew’s successful rescue., an unusual aspect of this situation was the presence of a couple dozen boats in the 2023 world arc, an international circumnavigation rally, coming up behind raindancer . on receiving reports “by multiple means” of the sinking, rally control put out a fleet mes- sage to rally crews. the world arc ssb radio duty control- ler, chris parker on mistral of portsmouth, also relayed the distress message , and ten arc boats close to raindancer ’s lat- est coordinates changed course along with two non-arc boats, including s/v rolling stones , which turned out to be closest, only 35 nm away., tommy joyce did not receive the original message from rick because he doesn’t check iridium much, but he did get the message from rick’s brother which came through whatsapp via tommy’s star- link. (fb) “at that moment, i set up multiple chats, posts and other comms.” ninety per- cent of the tools tommy used required fast internet access, which starlink provided. he was able to communicate with both rolling stones and with the sar assets. ultimately rolling stones and a panamani- an-flagged tanker both arrived at the scene, but it was easier to board the sailboat and rain- dancer’s crew was able to turn on a personal locator beacon (plb) and shoot off a para- chute flare to guide them in., both efforts depended on satellite communications, and were run more or less in parallel. a question raised on boatwatch’s facebook page was whether/how in future the land-based sar scenario could be altered to include recreational boats, which are not now included. amver is a world-wide voluntary ship reporting system operated by the united states coast guard that gives the sar authorities information on and commu- nications access to vessels near a reported disaster. only mer- chant vessels more than 1,000 gross tons on a voyage of 24 hours or longer are eligible to enroll in amver, but sar coordinator at rcc in ala- meda kris robertson posted on boatwatch fb that it was helpful to have had phone numbers for all sailing vessels that were involved in the rescue or relaying information. “most of the time communications is the hardest part of any res- cue coordination…question for the group, is there a place where you all keep underway phone numbers for sailing vessels”, eddie and glenn tuttle and boatwatch along with tommy joyce were instrumental again a few days later when a crew member on board a world arc boat s/v cepa had a serious stroke. cepa was 6-7 days’ sail out of the marquesas without enough fuel to motor flat out. the captain was able to email rescue coordinators in germany, world arc rally control, and a medical support for german-flagged vessels. jrcc papeete was contacted, rcc alameda released safetynet and safetycast group emergency messages to ships over iridium and inmarsat, and the captain also sent a distress call to the chat group of the arc fleet. tommy joyce again acted as a mobile command center. the arc boats were able to scan the area around cepa’s position using ais and assist in locating nearby boats that could help. s/v pec divert- ed from the rally to provide medicine and ultimately their captain went into the rescue effort as doctor. even with this help, there was still the issue of time. a motor yacht, paladin, located through ais, did not respond to initial attempts to communicate. in a stroke of fortune for all involved, the email list used to forward the distress call to the rally fleet included a weather routing company that recognized the yacht as a previous customer and was able to contact the yacht’s owner, who then con- tacted the captain, initiating a successful evacuation of the crew member complete with delivery of enough fuel to increase paladin’s speed and allow them to divert to nuku hiva., “two back-to-back amazing rescues,” said eddie., it’s hard to imagine that all the activity in raindancer ’s rescue only lasted about 10 hours, yet photos of the four people sitting on s/v rolling stones showed up on facebook the day after the sinking., for all the hoopla, especially given the unusual circumstance of the rally being in the vicinity, it’s important to remember that rescue options are usually scant, potential rescuers scattered far and wide, and those of us out on the ocean need to be take responsibility for our adventurous tendencies., peter nielsen posted on the boat watch facebook page that when he crewed on a cat in the pacific in 2020 that was hit by a whale, the coast guard picked up the epirb signal, emailed the boat via iridiumgo and initiated voice contact, leading to rescue nine hours later by a chinese fishing boat., eddie says besides online they also posted an emergency message for the maritime mobile service network (mmsn.org) which is read by ham radio operators on ham radio frequency 14.300, a world wide network of ham radio operators communicating with vessels at sea. i spent 10 years in the pacific on a peterson 44, and often this radio net was the only live link my husband and i had to land., it takes an ocean., contributing editor ann hoffner and husband tom bailey cruised on their peterson 44, oddly enough. she’s now based in sorrento, maine., noonsite.com – re ocean navigator article”key communications in an offshore rescue” by ann hoffer, the role of technology in rescues, this article for ocean navigator by ann hoffer, key communications in an offshore rescue (page 18), demonstrates how technology is changing the way rescues at sea work. it’s a detailed account of two yacht rescues in the south pacific in march 2023., eddie tuttle of boatwatch , who was involved in the rescue, told noonsite; “i think this is one of the most amazing stories ever of communication, captain and crew safety skill and the maritime community coming together. when tommy joyce commented on boat watch facebook that he had set up a mobile command post in the vast pacific ocean, i drew a sigh of relief and amazement at this cruiser stepping up in such a profound and diligent way., he also did a great job along with raindancer’s shore side contact vinny matiola, of coordinating the numerous people trying to help. and then there is the boat, sv rolling stones, that diverted and took 4 more crew on in the middle of nowhere. i still wonder how the provisions went.to top off the raindancer episode, soon thereafter tommy joyce helped handle the medical emergency and dramatic rescue on sv cepa in the middle of nowhere, chris parker, marine weather center, who has helped boatwatch and various coast guards and relayed distressed messages for countless boats, also assisted as the worldarc ssb radio controller., ann hoffner sums up her article by saying, “it takes an ocean”. so true. i encourage cruisers to read the article (page 18) “., the rescue coordination centers worldwide and other resources can be found at https://boatwatch.org/resources/.

This is the Captain, Rick Rodriquez, of Raindancer’s first account posted on Facebook.

Update from raindancer captain after striking whale in pacific ocean., hey everyone, first off thanks for all the support. we are still feeling very drained by everything, but i wanted to put out a small piece of the story to answer everyone’s questions all at once. so here goes., we were sitting in the cockpit of raindancer, enjoying some homemade pizza that bianca was making from a recipe one of her friends had given her. it reminded us of a day we had in the galapagos before our departure. it was a beautiful sunset, and our crew, and the crew of southern cross shared a memorable evening together, eating pizza, talking about how lucky we were to be sailing across the pacific ocean with friends and the journey that lay ahead of us., fast forward a month and there we were, the 4 of us. myself, alana, bianca, and simon. on a 3100 nautical mile passage to the marquesas from the galapagos, with about 1400nm left to go. cooking up that tasty pizza. we had good winds, sunny skies, and were sailing at around 6kts. the second pizza had just come out of the oven, and i was dipping a slice into some ranch dressing when it felt like we ran into a concrete wall. i heard a loud crashing noise simultaneous with a metal clanking. i heard alana 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., i told everyone to check the bilges, and went down myself to check for water and collision damage. within 5 seconds the high water bilge alarm went off, i could see water rushing in from the stern of the boat. at that point i knew the damage was very significant, and that most likely we were going to lose the boat., at that point the crew began gathering safety equipment, supplies, emergency gear, electronics, etc. and they did an extremely good job of it. i went to the back of the boat to search for the source of the water., at this point maybe 30 seconds have gone by since impact, and while i was searching the aft bilges, rudder, stuffing box areas, the water had already filled up above the floor. it was difficult to locate the source from the inside with the water level so high already., at this point i was nearly certain the boat was going down, and at a rapid level. i made a last attempt to plug up water intrusion from the outside. on my way out i helped bring out the liferaft and grabbed and set off one of our epirbs, and made a vhf radio mayday call. i deployed the life raft and it inflated as advertised., i then realized that the sails were still up and the boat was still moving forward and it put a lot of tension on the painter line of the winslow liferaft, which had automatically deployed a sea anchor. afraid that the painter would break, bianca and i quickly put the sails away., while this was happening, simon asked me, “should we launch the dinghy” i said absolutely. simon and alana were launching our 10.5ft. apex dinghy that was sitting upright and inflated on the foredeck. after helping simon and alana launch the dinghy, i put on my mask and fins on and jumped overboard with a tarp. i saw the damage instantly. there were multiple holes or “cracks”. the biggest one being around the prop shaft. it seems part of the whale must have hit the shaft with a strong force and busted open the fiberglass around the shaft. it was a very awkward hole to try and plug with rags and a tarp. it had a stainless steel shaft in the middle, and the holes around it were more like caves with broken pieces of fiberglass all around and inside it. in addition to this, i also noticed 2-3 full length cracks maybe an inch in diameter along the base of the skeg where it meets the hull, and about halfway down the skeg. i made attempts to shove a tarp in the hole (s) but it kept coming out. i tried to wrap the tarp around the damaged ared concicting of the rudder cked and and prop shaft and tie it around itself, but the open ocean waves and swell made that difficult, and with a boat that was already 2/3 full of water at that point, i decided to forego my efforts and focus on the safety and survival of the crew., we started to load the dinghy up with as much supplies and emergency gear as possible. at this point we could no longer fill up water jugs as the water level was above the sink. the toe rail was inches from the water. the girls were both in the dinghy waiting for simon and i to join them. i paused for a moment, tried to think of anything else i could be forgetting, or anything else i should do., i then took a moment to take in the scene of what was happening, a split second. i could feel my emotions wanting to rise to the foreground but i quickly shoved them back down and simon and i stepped into the water just as emotions wanting to rise to the foreground but i quickly shoved them back down and simon and i stepped into the water just as the toe rail went under. i then swam to the liferaft. when i got in it, i looked back and could see the last 10ft of the mast sinking down at an unbelievable speed., our painter line, which is designed to break before being pulled under with the boat, was still attached to the boat. alana noticed it and shouted to cut it.. luckily i had a leatherman knife in my pocket and cut the painter as it was coming under tension., the boat, and all our belongings was gone, out of sight, sinking to the bottom of one of the most remote parts of the ocean. 10,000ft down. we took a moment to breathe, and then began organizing and taking inventory of the items that we had manaded to secure., the sun began to set and soon it was pitch dark. and we were floating right smack in the middle of the pacific ocean with a dinghy and a liferaft. hopeful that we would be rescued soon., alana and i were in the dinghy which was secured to the liferaft by three lines, one with shock cord we had linked together from the tethers of our life vests. flying fish kept jumping in the dinghy through the night and the wind speed increased. a crazy moment floating in the ocean looking up at the stars., someone was always looking out for ships, and we were making a mayday call from our handheld radio every hour., at about 0500z on march 14th, simon spotted the first lights. this was shortly followed by radio contact from sailing vessel rolling stones. we all screamed in relief when we heard the voices of geoff (captain of rolling stones) over the radio. we were damn near over the radio. we were damn near rescued, and all we had to do now was safely transfer ourselves and our little belongings onto the leopard 45 catamaran., i set off a parachute flare and activated my personal ais beacon to help them with our location. once they approached, we all got into the dinghy, as we felt it would be easier to make the transfer. we came alongside rolling stones and threw over two lines. they brought us in and one by one we all dove forward onto their sugar scoop transom, timing the waves with every jump. we were rescued., a huge thank you to the crew of raindancer who made my job easy. i’m so proud of everyone for staying calm, gathering emergency equipment, and the way everything was handled. all the credit to them., big thanks to my brother roger, once i knew that he was aware of the situation, i knew we would be ok. big thanks to my mom for dealing with the caos on the homefront and all the emergency phone calls from the coast guard., huge thanks to tommy joyce from southern cross, and my good friend vinny mattiola. they were in contact with rescue boats giving them accurate information and advice. without them the rescue would not have gone so swiftly and smooth., a huge thanks to the entire sailing community for coming together to aid in our rescue. the one thing i’ve always loved about sailing is the people. we are truly special group of people. i’m thankful to be a part of such a supportive community., a big thanks to the starlink community, without starlink, our rescue wouldn’t have gone so swiftly and smoothly. technology saved our lives., perhaps the biggest thanks to our rescuers and captain geoff of sailing vessel rolling stones, for going out of their way to save us. taking 4 strangers in on their home, and sailing the rest of the way together to french polynesia., it’s true, i’m sad to have lost my boat. it was everything to me. it was more than iust what i was doing more than just my way to save us. taking 4 stangers in on their home, and sailing the rest of the way together to french polynesia. it’s true, i’m sad to have lost my boat. it was everything to me. it was more than just what i was doing, more than just my home with all my belongings, it was a part of who i am. it stings about as much as losing any inanimate object can sting. but at the end of the day the most important things, by far, were rescued. we all have a lot to think about. thanks to everyone for all messages and support., update: march 13 & 14, 2023, from boat watch facebook group, note from boat watch: great job by the other arc boats with communications and sv rolling stones in this rescue..

———————————————–

BOLO Ended (0615z): Final Update: All four (crew + Captain) have been rescued.

Their vessel sank just 15minutes after striking a whale. their epirb never functioned as intended. 10 vessels responded, all due to starlink being active., update 4: rolling stone spotted liferaft, update 3: sv rolling stone, sv far, mv dong a maia are closest and responding now (0459z 3/13), update 2: eight or more vessels are responding. new position from sv raindancer @ 0223 11 31.129 s / 117 31.247 w, sv raindancer has sunk in the pacific. all four crew are not injured and in liferaft with dinghy in tow with ample food water. their iridium battery is low. iridium appears to be their only comms device and will only turn it on every 2 or 3 hours., their last coordinates are: 11°30.7s. 117°26.9w., coast guard has been contacted. 20+ world arc boats are nearby. sy far is closest and is responding now (2310z 3/13), not a drill. we are in the pacific headed that direction but there are closer vessels., vessel has sunk. they were hit by a whale., facebook post by vinnie mattiola, edit 3/15: we’ve learned that the epirb did function as intended to transmit position data to sar services in peru & uscg great to hear of the device’s successful operation, however worth noting that only commercial vessels are privy to amver notices issued by jrcc, and not local private yachts who were better equipped to assist promptly., early last night my friend on sv raindancer @distantseasyachts hit a whale mid-pacific while crossing from galapagos to the marqueses….to put that into perspective, they were 13 days into a 20-22 day, 3000nm ocean crossing. the capt reports the whale strike damaged the skeg & prop strut, and the boat was completely underwater in <15mins, forcing all 4 crew to abandon into the life raft. they brought provisions and water, secured the dinghy to the raft, and carried emergency equipment for communications and survival., their iridiumgo device was instrumental in broadcasting their position via the vessel’s predictwind tracking page, in addition to their spot tracker. unfortunately, it appears their activated epirb malfunctioned and did not transmit a gps position to the coast guard., in an astonishing effort by the cruising community, boat watch , and world arc participants, communications were quickly established with nearby vessels using starlink devices and assistance coordinated immediately. within 10hrs they were rescued by sv rolling stones, with assistance from sv far and sv southern cross in the vicinity as well. all crew are safe and even sent me a voice message thanking everyone involved., watching this rescue-at-sea be conducted so efficiently is truly inspirational, let alone in real-time thanks to the updates from vessels equipped with starlink devices. i was able to whatsapp and facebook message with the nearest yacht to pass along additional info.….something that may not be appreciated by land people for how remarkable it is., the pacific ocean is a vastness which can barely be fathomed. we’ve entered a new era for safety-at-sea and tonight’s events highlight the need for widespread utilization of all available resources to promote the type of competent and outstanding seam’nship displayed by these crews., the swiftness of action from sv raindancer’s crew was incredible given the circumstances, and i’m grateful to all others involved for assisting our friends. i can only hope this becomes a case study for model emergency response in the future., 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 lifeboat 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 roughly three months and 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 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 if 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 still-moving raindancer., rodriguez grabbed his snorkel gear and a tarp and jumped into the water to see if 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 wi-fi 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 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 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, he felt like 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.”, a previous version of this article misstated the size of the j-boat that sank in 2009. it was 40 feet., broadcast version for maritime mobile service network and other net, emergency bolo for 4 sailors in a liferaft after sv raindancer sank in south pacific. the last coordinates are:, 11 31.129 s / 117 31.247 w, vessels in vicinity are requested to keep a sharp lookout, assist if possible and make all reports to rcc alameda., reports to rcc alameda, telex: 230172343, phone: 510 437 3701, e-mail: [email protected] ., 140022z mar 23 hydropac 845/23(22). eastern south pacific. dnc 06. s/v rain dancer sank in 11-30.70s 117-26.90w. four persons abandoned ship in liferaft. vessels in vicinity requested to keep a sharp lookout, assist if possible. reports to rcc alameda, telex: 230172343, phone: 510 437 3701, e-mail: [email protected] ., recent posts.

BOLO for Four Missing New Guinea
Bolo for MV OPTIMUN Montserrat
BOLO for SV “Kehaar” Darwin Australia to Mexico
USCG Rescues Two Sailors During Tropical Storm Debby
BOLO for “SV LUKE” 8:24″ Burrum Heads Australia
BOLO for 20 foot Galaxy MV Overdue Nassau to Moore’s Island
BOLO for Guanaja Fisherman
BOLO MV Jigging Isla Mujeres Mexico
BOLO for SV Pretty Woman Hawaii to Oregon
SV Rhapsode Overdue San Juan to Lake Worth, Florida

All Reports for…

View All Archived Reports

Top 5 Maritime Tech startups in Australasia

U.S. Coast Guard returns 109 migrants to Dominican Republic

Video: houthis capture greek oil tanker in red sea, why do somali pirates hijack ships.

crew change crisis
crew change

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.

Sign Up for Our Newsletters

Related posts, explosion aboard chinese bulker cssc cape town in gibraltar bay leaves four injured, uscg cutter valiant returns home after interdicting $27 million in cocaine, singapore bars ship crew changes from south asian countires, waiting to be repatriated, a second engineer went missing at sea.

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

Human Interest
Wild Animals

I Survived a Whale Attack That Left My Family Stranded in the Ocean for 38 Days (Exclusive)

"I found myself swimming desperately in the water knowing that any second the killer whales could return and I would feel their bite," recalls Douglas Robertson

Provided by Douglas Robertson

In 1968, Dougal and Linda Robertson, as well as their four children — Anne, 18, Douglas, 16, and twins Neil and Sandy, 9 — were glued to radio, following British master yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston ’s attempt to become the first person to sail solo around the world non-stop. It prompted Neil to say: “Daddy's a sailor. Why don't we sail around the world, too?”

So the Robertsons sold their farm and used the money to buy a schooner, which they set sail on in 1971 from Falmouth, England. On June 15, 1972, some 18 months after the family embarked on their voyage, the schooner was attacked by three killer whales in the Pacific Ocean. It forced the Robertsons and a hitchhiker to abandon ship and seek refuge first in a raft and then later in a dinghy. Stranded for 38 days, they relied on rainwater, turtle blood and their wits alone, before a Japanese boat found and rescued them . Remarkably, no one died.

The rescue made headlines, and Dougal, who died in 1992, wrote a book, Survive the Savage Sea , about the experience. Douglas later revisited the shipwreck in his 2004 book, The Last Voyage of the Lucette . Here, Douglas, now 70, recalls the entire ordeal — from the optimism of the initial voyage to finally returning to land — in his own words, as told to PEOPLE's David Chiu.

Douglas Robertson

It was the summer of 1970. We bought this schooner, Lucette , in Malta, and sailed it back to Falmouth. Now, 18 months after we'd made the decision to sail and sold the farm, we sat thinking, "Are we really doing to do this?"

Of course, the answer was yes, and that's what we did on Jan. 27, 1971. We didn't even sail around the bay for a bit of practice with the yacht before we set sail from around the world. Dougal said training is best done on the job. That turned out to be shortsightedness.

Initially, that training consisted of heavy weather, close encounters with other ships and breakages, but we mostly had a fantastic time basically fishing and meeting other likeminded people. We went from Lisbon, then to the Canary Islands. We inherited a life raft [from a fellow traveler], thank God, and we sailed out through the Caribbean, up through the Bahamas and to Miami, where we stayed for about six months. We worked there and saved up some money for the next leg.

We left the United States in January 1972 and sailed on. My sister had decided that she wouldn't come with us any further as she'd fallen in love with a young man. It changed the boat because we were no longer a full family. We'd left one of our people behind.

We sailed onto Jamaica, through the Panama Canal, and southwest to the Galapagos Islands. We were there for three weeks before heading to the Marquesas Islands some 2,000 miles away. On the way, we picked up Robin [Williams], a student hitchhiker, in Panama.

It was two days and 200 miles out from the Galapagos when on June 15 at 10 o'clock in the morning that three killer whales attacked with a bone-jarring strike. “Bang, bang, bang!” was the first thing we heard. We knew instinctively we were in trouble.

Almost immediately, I poked my head down the cockpit hatch and saw water swirling around Dougal's ankles. Our words were interrupted by a loud surging noise over my left shoulder. I looked around and there were three killer whales in close company following us: a daddy, a baby, and a mommy. And the daddy whale had his head split open and was bleeding into the water. I said, “Dad, there's whales out here.” He said, “I've got to try and fix the leak.” Even I knew that that couldn't really be done. The water was coming in too quickly. Then he said to me, “Look, we're going to have to abandon ship. Get the life raft over the side, get the dinghy over the side. I'll be with you soon.”

Our voyage of discovery turned into a nightmare. I rushed forward to take down the sails as if it would somehow delay the inevitable. I took the dinghy Ednamair and launched it over the side and with a single heave flung the 80-pound raft into the sea. The next wave washed me off the foredeck and I found myself swimming desperately in the water knowing that any second the killer whales could return and I would feel their bite.

The raft was still attached to the sinking yacht, and that's what held it close by so we could board. The dinghy held the raft back and stopped the wind from blowing it away. It also enabled us to collect some of the wreckage [from the sunken Lucette ] that was floating in the water. We managed to get the sail, my mom's sewing basket, biscuits, oranges, lemons, onions and other flotsam in the vicinity of the raft. All of that took place in a few minutes.

And we were very grateful that we were still all alive and somehow made it that far. Of course, with one problem solved, we now had another because we had to try and decide what to do.

A plan was born as we were in the raft. We would sail north to the Doldrums and collect rainwater. With that rainwater, we would then set sail, towing the raft with the dinghy using the sail I rescued from the wreckage. We thought we could be in the Doldrums in a week to 10 days.

We made three promises to each other. Firstly, we said we would not eat each other no matter how bad it got. We would die quietly together if that's what it came to. Secondly, we would constantly search for a rescue ship. The third pledge was that we would not rest until we got back to land. We felt buoyed up beyond words and hopeful that there was a chance that we might survive.

Finally, on the sixth day we were adrift, a ship sailed past us and didn't see us, despite us sending up flares. It left us devastated and it changed our mindset. Dougal said, “No longer will we look for rescue. We are going to sail on this dinghy for 75 days [to America].” I said, “Dad, we can't survive in this.” And he said, “We have to.”

On the 10th day, we've arrived at the Doldrums. It didn't rain for another three days. But when it rained, it rained. And we were so happy — we sang, we laughed, we cried. We filled all our tins with water and dared think for the first that we might make it.

Six days later, we lost the raft and had to all go to the dinghy. We had terrible thunderstorms. We were so cold. We had no clothes to wear. They rotted away from us. We lost all the bloody water, so we went for five days with hardly any water at all — and that was a self-inflicted wound because we had spilled the water ourselves.

When it rained, the water gathered in the bottom of the dinghy. But we couldn't drink that water. It was too dirty. My mum came up with this idea [of using enemas to stay hydrated]. So I made the enema tube from the rung of a ladder. I attached a funnel and then my mother administered them.

We also came up with these fantastic fish-catching contraptions. We did manage to catch turtles and found a way of drinking their blood so we could stay hydrated. We also caught dolphins, sucking their eyeballs and their vertebrae for water. Even a shark's stomach provided us with what resembled a cooked meal from the partially digested contents.

I gave up at one point, and Dougal said, “Douglas don't. Do not let your bright light go out. We need you to survive so that you could help us survive.” What kept my dad and my mum going was not their own survival, but the survival of their children. My dad said, “I will not rest Linda until I get these boys on a steamer home.”

It was the 38th day [of us being shipwrecked]. We were talking about being so close to land now that it couldn't be far away and we should start rowing. But then we saw a Japanese fishing boat, Toka Maru II. We had two flares left that we'd saved from [ Lucette ]. Dougal cast it into the sea and said, “Well, it's all in God's hands now."

The fishing boat finally altered course towards us, and there was no doubt in our minds that we were going to be picked up. The ship approached and they threw a heaving line across. I grabbed hold of it. It was dirty and oily, and I loved it. I thought, “This is not from our world. This is from another world that I belong to. And if I just hang on to this bloody rope, we are going to be back to civilization very soon.”

Eager hands from Toka Maru II reached out and pulled us on board. They offered us bread, coffee and some orange juice. The captain said, “I thought you maybe have scurvy because you smelled so bad.” We bathed for the first time in six weeks.

We were very weak when we arrived in Panama, and the doctor thought we couldn't manage to fly home. Although Robin managed to fly, we went home by ship. Our strength came back and we were ready for a new life again, although we didn't know what the future held for us.

Dougal bought another yacht with the proceeds [from his book Survive the Savage Sea , about the shipwreck] in order to try and finally complete the voyage. But he never did and he settled in the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, I joined the Merchant Navy and sailed around the world three times. Our dinghy Ednamair is now housed at the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall, England.

We had sight of a common goal and what got us through that challenging time was we worked as a team and contributed our special skills in achieving that goal. Dougal was the strategist, my mother provided the care, I provided the muscles, Robin kept our morale up, and the twins kept us honest. They reinforced the need for us to survive for their young lives.

If you just say, "Look, you were cast adrift for 38 days. Get over it. You survived" — well, that is true. But what is also true is that you keep thinking that you're going to die. You die five times a day. You don't know if you're going to make it. That changes you and makes you value life. And it is those things that make you into a stronger person.

52-ft whale washes up on San Diego's Pacific Beach

The fin whale is the second-largest whale species on earth, behind only the blue whale. they are also considered endangered and are, “fairly rare.”, by dana williams • published december 10, 2023 • updated on december 11, 2023 at 3:13 pm.

A dead 52-foot fin whale washed up on the beach off of Santa Rita Place near the border of Mission Beach and Pacific Beach on Sunday morning.

The whale, which washed ashore before 9:30 a.m., was finally towed back into the ocean by lifeguards Sunday evening, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department said, but there is a chance it could return due to tides. If that were to happen, lifeguards would tow it out to sea once again.

24/7 San Diego news stream: Watch NBC 7 free wherever you are

Before the beached mammal was cleared from the beach, the unusual site drew dozens of spectators. Some people were seen running up to the whale, and some touching it, but lifeguards quickly warned them to stay away through their vehicle’s loudspeaker several times.

By 11 a.m. researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) arrived and worked with lifeguards to create a perimeter around the whale. They were seen taking photos and collecting data.

Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.

A whale is shown on Pacific Beach in San Diego after washing ashore, Dec. 10, 2023.

The whale appeared to be bleeding from its side. Lifeguards attempted to tow the whale back out to the ocean by connecting its tail to a small boat, but it was unsuccessful.

Michael Milstein, a public affairs officer with NOAA, said the whale is a female juvenile. He said the blood seen on the whale’s side was likely from birds pecking at it. It does not appear to have any propeller marks or gashes, which would be typical if it were hit by a vessel. It was not immediately clear how how the whale died.

These San Diego senior pets are still searching for their forever homes

Clear the shelters pet of the day, Thursday, Sept. 5: Sebastian

“It’s definitely something that I feel like never really happens on, like, public beaches. I feel like not many people see it very often,” said Audrey Hagger, who was walking with her dad. “It’s unfortunate.”

Milstein said while they encourage people to appreciate the whale, they warned bystanders and pets to stay away from it and give researchers their space. Because the cause of death is still unknown, the whale could have an underlying illness, he added.

A crowd gathers to look at a whale that washed ashore on Pacific Beach in San Diego, Dec. 10, 2023.

SDFD told NBC 7 that the whale was towed out to sea by lifeguards on Sunday where the whale then sank about a mile off shore. Lifeguards will continue to monitor the coast in case the whale is to come back due to the tides.

If the whale were to come back to shore, lifeguards would work on towing it out again.

The fin whale is the second-largest whale species on earth, behind only the blue whale. They are also considered endangered and are, “fairly rare,” according to Milstein. This whale could weigh up to 100,00 pounds.

Cynthia Polis is a nearby resident and called the incident "super sad."

”We’ve lived here for a long time. This is the first time we’ve ever seen this so it’s heartbreaking," Polis said.

Milstein said they appreciate people reporting this to the NOAA stranding line. If you come across a stranded or injured marine mammal, you can learn how to report it here .

This article tagged under:

MORE SECTIONS

Dear Deidre

Mystery over boat-ramming killer whales blamed for sinking yachts solved as scientists uncover reason for orca attacks

Mackenzie Tatananni , Science and Tech Reporter
Published : 16:54, 5 Sep 2024
Updated : 19:01, 5 Sep 2024
Published : Invalid Date,

ORCAS know exactly what they're doing when they ram into boats - and now scientists have proposed an explanation.

The peculiar behavior has captured public interest and sparked a spate of internet memes .

Killer whales are known to target boats around the Iberian Peninsula, and researchers believe they've uncovered the reason why

A lighthearted theory emerged among netizens that the creatures were taking "revenge" against a human presence in their waters.

This came after a series of highly publicized collisions, including an instance in late July where a pod of orcas tipped over a 39-foot yacht.

At the time, the owner claimed the act was intentional, proclaiming the killer whales "knew exactly what they were doing."

And a new theory suggests that may be the case.

A study published June 18 in Ocean and Coastal Management presents compelling evidence that orcas use boats for target practice as they learn to hunt.

Researchers at the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute in Spain noted an increase in reports of "interactive behavior" with vessels around the Iberian Peninsula since 2020.

They believe juvenile orcas might be honing in on the boats' rudders as they practice hunting Atlantic bluefin tuna.

The researchers pored over population distribution data and found that 47% of 597 records of killer whale occurrences involved a vessel.

Most read in News Tech

Major bargain chain with 600 locations to close ALL stores on Boxing Day

Bodies of babies and children discovered among remains of 300 in mass grave

US school 'shooter's' dad charged with murder over 'son's rampage that killed 4'

Sir Terry Wogan's wife Helen dies as son pays tribute to 'beautiful' mum

Using this information, they created computer models of the orcas' movements to paint a picture of their seasonal movements.

The models demonstrated that the orcas and their prey - tuna, not boats - were driven by the same environmental factors.

Notably, seasonal shifts in the orcas' preferred habitats aligned with the tuna's migration.

Orcas are apex predators, meaning they sit at the top of the food chain with no natural predators of their own.

This responsibility comes with a generous appetite. Killer whales have a varied diet ranging from larger mammals like seals to fish, squid, and sea birds.

Different orca communities prefer different food sources, with the Iberian population favoring tuna.

Juvenile orcas may be using the vessels for target practice while they learn how to hunt, honing in on fast-moving rudders and ramming them

"The abundance of Atlantic bluefin tuna...in the area, particularly during spring and summer, has led to a significant dietary focus on this fish species, at least during the mentioned seasons, for this killer whale population," the scientists wrote.

Scientists suspect the plentiful supply - fueled, in part, by conservation efforts - makes hunting easier and leaves the orcas with leisure time.

Killer whales are highly social animals that work in close-knit groups to catch prey. To isolate an individual tuna from a school, they ram. Once they've succeeded, they exhaust the fish and chase it towards shallower waters.

Based on anecdotal evidence, the scientists believe the orcas are performing similar actions by repeatedly ramming the rudder before trying to take a bite.

Orcas around Portugal and Spain have the same seasonal movements as their prey, bluefin tuna, further suggesting that boat-ramming is linked to hunting behavior

In addition to clearing up a common misconception, the conclusions may impact killer whale conservation.

As a species, orcas are woefully misunderstood, and boat-ramming does not help their reputation.

There have been no reports of fatal attacks on humans in their natural habitat, but the creatures are often perceived as bloodthirsty beasts.

BBC drama that last aired TWO decades ago makes shock return to screen

Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy welcomes second child and reveals name

In addition to improving public perception, a better understanding of orca behavior could help boaters avoid collisions and reduce property damage.

"This approach aims to provide valuable insights into the habitat preferences of this species with the potential to enhance conservation efforts by informing strategies to mitigate human-killer whale interactions," the scientists wrote.

Orcas - How dangerous are they?

Orcas - also known as killer whales - are the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family.

The creatures are dubbed "killer whales" as they hunt and eat other smaller species of dolphin.

Some also feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals like seals and other dolphins.

They're known as apex predators meaning they're at the top of the food-chain and no other animals feed on them.

There are no recorded incidents of orcas attacking humans before the bizarre boat-bashings, but they have been known to feast on other land-dwelling mammals like moose who swim between islands.

Weird Science
Wildlife and nature

svg]:fill-accent-900">

How do you keep pilots and passengers of sea planes safe?

By Barbara Peterson / Hakai Magazine

Posted on Sep 6, 2024 8:00 AM EDT

22 minute read

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine , an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com .

It is half past noon on a cool November day on an island in the Pacific Ocean, and I am learning what it is like to drown.

First there’s the shock—the rush of water as I am plunged into the drink, flipped upside down, and submerged about a meter under the surface. I’m churned and spun around, I can’t see, and I have about a minute to get free before I lose consciousness.

In my disoriented state, I fumble for an exit I know is there, but it eludes me. I’m seized with the fear that no one is coming to my rescue, and I panic. I later learn that doctors have identified the point of no return at a mere 87 seconds after your last breath, when you reflexively open your mouth, aspirate water, and start to drown. At last, my fingers locate a door handle. I unbuckle my seatbelt and swim to safety.

If this had been a real seaplane emergency, instead of a simulation in a mock cockpit in a heated swimming pool, odds are I would be dead. Seventy percent of fatalities in aircraft that crash into water in Canada are caused not by impact but by drowning. That deadly statistic—from the country’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB)—has brought me and 10 others to this motel in Victoria, British Columbia, for “underwater egress training,” a sort of boot camp in how to escape a sinking plane or helicopter. Seaplanes are, by definition, aircraft that can use water as a runway for take offs and landings. Perhaps the most common seaplanes are floatplanes, which have pontoons. My classmates are professional pilots, often at the controls of floatplanes, along with one healthcare worker who travels often by floatplane to remote communities. As of March 2023, all commercial floatplane pilots are legally required to take the training every three years.

We are led by Bryan Webster, known in seaplane circles as “Bry the Dunker Guy,” a veteran pilot who has already trained close to 10,000 individuals whose jobs involve either piloting seaplanes or flying on them frequently. Webster mixes practical advice with these Houdini-style escapades. Calling this drill a dunking is a bit of an understatement; it’s more like waterboarding. Anyone taking this one-day course undergoes it multiple times, and repetition is key. The idea is that people can learn to extricate themselves—and perhaps a few others—from what would otherwise be a watery grave. Webster says that of 31 pilots who have taken his course and were subsequently in a floatplane crash in water, all survived—a 100 percent success rate. These survivors also rescued 31 passengers, for a total of 62 lives saved.

I’m here for the immersive experience as a journalist, and to make the drenching authentic I wear pants, a sweater, and loafers, just as I would if this were a real flight. And as in real life, my initial instinct is to do all the wrong things. “The first thing most people do if they are in a crash of any vehicle is unbuckle their seatbelt, right?” Webster asks us. Do that in a crippled seaplane, though, and you could hit your head, collide with other occupants, or get stuck before you have a chance to get out. The rule here is to follow a four-step process, which we’re required to memorize: grab a door handle, open the exit while grasping onto a point outside the plane, then release your belt and grab a life vest, and inflate it once you’ve safely exited.

For many of my classmates, the course is a refresher. They spend their waking hours flying pint-sized planes adorned with pontoons and names like Beaver, Otter, and Goose to far-flung locations: north to Port Hardy at the tip of Vancouver Island, over to remote sites on the BC mainland, or farther afield in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Their clients aren’t just tourists or “rich Americans going duck hunting,” as one pilot in the class joked. On any given day, seaplanes in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest ferry a breadth of clients to the places they need to go—from wealthy tourists going on remote hunting trips, to blue-collar workers heading to fish farms or logging camps, to scientists visiting remote marine labs, to people who live off the road system and are trying to reach medical care in a city. For the pilots who make such travel possible, crashing is more than theoretical: they often fly solo to inaccessible places, “secret locations far from civilization,” as writer Ann Patchett described in a New Yorker piece on flying seaplanes around Alaska. The allure of this rugged lifestyle is undeniable. But therein lies the paradox: the same attributes that lend the seaplane an aura of romance also highlights its shortcomings as a modern form of transportation.

“Half-boat and half-airplane, but inherently suboptimal as both,” is how Robert Erdos, a test pilot for the US Navy, once described the essence of the floatplane, which “demands the skills of both a mariner and an aviator.” Many operate in the bush, connecting remote or isolated communities, and some date back to the 1950s or 1960s, often lacking modern tools like GPS and autopilot technology. The risks come from the fact that they land on water, and that in the rugged landscapes they routinely traverse—featuring mountains and large bodies of water—weather is unpredictable, tidal and surf conditions fluctuate, and hazards hide just below the water’s surface. To add to the danger, some seaplanes are equipped with wheels so they can land on terra firma as well. Therein lies another threat: if the landing gear—the wheels—isn’t in the right position for the surface, there may be no warning. And if a plane with its landing gear set for terrain lands on water, it will instantly flip over and sink, since the gear hits before the pontoons, which are intended to smooth the landing, in turn throwing off the plane’s aerodynamics.

Despite all this, what buoys this sliver of the aviation world is a subculture of proud floatplane pilots. Pockets of them persist in Alaska, Northern Ontario, the Caribbean, and, increasingly, the Maldives, which is by some measures the busiest floatplane market in the world, and a more laid-back one (where references to “barefoot pilots” are taken literally). For North America, though, the Pacific Northwest is seaplane central: BC-based Harbour Air Seaplanes, which bills itself as the largest all-seaplane company in North America, with 40 aircraft, carries more than 450,000 passengers around the southern coast of British Columbia alone every year. And that’s just one of several floatplane operators in the region.

The Pacific Northwest’s practical and cultural connection with seaplanes is fitting, because it is home to the Boeing factory, a cradle of modern aviation and the progenitor of today’s seaplanes. More than a century ago, a tiny seaplane made its debut 120 kilometers southeast of where we’re learning to survive a crash into water.

In Seattle, Washington, on June 15, 1916, a young man named William Boeing hopped into a rickety winged contraption made of spruce wood, steel wire, and linen fabric. Docked at Lake Union, the machine looked like a First World War biplane with pontoons for landing on water. It wasn’t the first seaplane ever built, but it was Boeing’s first aircraft.

Only a few of these “B&W” floatplanes—named for Boeing and his partner, naval aviator Conrad Westervelt—were built (a replica hangs at Seattle’s Museum of Flight). The company eventually built bigger seaplanes that could carry cargo and larger payloads. Rivals, such as upstate New York’s Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, also cranked out hundreds of seaplanes for private owners and navies around the world.

At first, amphibious craft that could land on water or hard terrain offered obvious advantages. They were faster than ships, capable of flying 84 kilometers per hour, and, given the lack of airports, in the event of an emergency it was easier to make a forced landing on water.

Soon a far grander iteration of the seaplane debuted: the “flying boat,” a yacht with wings. By the late 1930s, one of these—the Pan Am Clipper—was ferrying upward of 74 travelers across oceans in style, with lounges, dining rooms, and 36 sleeping berths for the well-heeled. Because its fuselage acted like a boat hull, it could land in any sheltered bay. The Clippers were luxurious, though slow: the flight from San Francisco to Honolulu took 19 hours, compared with under six hours today.

The Second World War changed aviation for good. The military needed long runways, so modern airfields appeared around major population centers, along with radar and air traffic control. Overall, landing on a hard, flat runway, with the technology to manage planes coming and going, turned out to be easier and more convenient than relying on sheltered bays scattered along coastlines. When Pan Am retired its fleet of flying boats in 1946, which at its peak totaled 28, pilots were happy to bid them adieu. “I argued daily for eliminating all flying boats,” one veteran pilot is quoted as saying.

The observation resonates today. Investment has steadily poured into commercial aviation, with advances in safety that have saved countless lives. The humble floatplane, to more jaundiced observers, is seemingly frozen in a 1950s time warp. But that appeals to a certain kind of pilot, one who prefers the friendly skies with a dose of thrill.

“So, I’m 17, well into my flight training, and I go for a ride with a family friend in a Cessna 150. And this fellow, he loved aerobatics, he was a bit of a risk-taker.” This is how Bryan Webster opens the classroom portion of his training sessions, and with a setup like that, you know it can’t end well.

The time is the late 1970s and the setting the Fraser River, which flows into the Strait of Georgia near Vancouver and is known for stunning scenery, strong currents, and—we soon learn—some unpredictable hazards in the air above. As Webster recounts how his joyride to nowhere turned into a flight from hell, it’s a catalog of almost everything that can go wrong when flying a small plane.

“The sun is setting as we’re coming back, it’s a very large glow of orange, and we’re heading directly for it,” Webster says. That drastically limits forward visibility, a serious problem since many small crafts fly under what’s called “visual flight rules”—a fancy way of saying you must rely on your eyes and your judgment instead of on the instruments that commercial pilots use. “You see, we pilots, we often fly low,” he deadpans. “It is not wise to fly low into the setting sun.”

Minutes from landing, as the plane descended to just 30 meters above the river’s surface, Webster spotted a cluster of power lines right in front of them. “I yelled at the top of my lungs, ‘Lines!’” The pilot attempted an aerobatic stunt to avoid the hazard, but, Webster continues, “here’s the fatal error: it was high tide. I knew when I saw that that we were going to hit water.” The plane slammed nose-down into the river at a speed of more than 160 kilometers per hour, generating an impact of around 20 G, or 20 times the force of gravity. The crash blew out the front windshield, and muddy water flooded the cockpit. “[It was] like having a fire hose put right in your face,” he says. Both men were knocked unconscious.

Webster came to as the water hit his nostrils. His unconscious friend hung upside down from seatbelt straps, bleeding profusely from the top of his head. Both suffered “extreme bruising” from the force of the crash, Webster says, and he learned then that not all seatbelts are the same. The Cessna featured secure five-point military-style harnesses. While such belts are more common now than they were in the 1970s, only single-strap belts are still required. “And that [five-point harness] is the only reason we survived this,” he says. But a safer seatbelt does not protect a survivor from a common obstacle to overcome in a floatplane crash: doors that often jam on impact and reduce the number of exits . Webster was lucky. The slam into the water blasted the doors off the cockpit. Webster got out, splashed over to the other side of the plane, dragged out his companion, put him in a chokehold, and swam to shore. The aircraft was totaled, but the pair was relatively unscathed.

Webster finished his training, got a license, and worked as a professional pilot for almost 20 years before he had another scare. One day in 1995, he briefly lost all engine power on one of his flights for a cargo airline. He was in a wheeled aircraft and landed safely at Vancouver Airport but wondered what he should have done had he crashed into the water. When he consulted his manual, he realized there was little useful information about what to do in that circumstance, which set him on a mission to raise awareness of how to survive a sinking plane. He launched his egress training courses in 1998.

By then, the dangers of seaplane travel had caught the attention of regulators in Canada, who were alarmed by the number of drownings in otherwise survivable crashes. A report from the TSB in 1994 concluded that most fatalities from accidents in water result from post-impact drownings, and those who did escape a sinking plane “experienced some difficulty in doing so.” The study also found that few occupants—even the pilots—took advantage of available shoulder harnesses, and without these restraints they were far more likely to be incapacitated by injuries and drown.

The TSB’s counterpart in the United States, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), has weighed in on the issue of seaplane safety several times, typically after a fatal accident. But the hard truth is that since most seaplanes typically can carry only a few people per flight, versus up 150 or more on an average narrow-body jet, there’s less impetus to prompt change if one does crash. That jibes with what insiders refer to as the “tombstone” philosophy in aviation safety policymaking, in which nothing happens until there are too many dead bodies to ignore.

In recent decades, though, several high-profile crashes have convinced aviation professionals that there’s more to be done to make seaplanes safer. In interviews, the experts I spoke with frequently referenced one of the worst seaplane crashes in Canadian history. The death toll was high, but it was the follow-up investigation that truly revealed the inadequacies of this form of travel.

It happened in November 2009, when a single-engine de Havilland Beaver, operated by Seair Seaplanes, crashed and sank in Lyall Harbour, off Saturna Island, between Vancouver Island and the BC mainland. A mother, the baby daughter she cradled on her lap, and four other passengers withstood the initial impact, only to drown because they were trapped inside the damaged cabin. The pilot and another passenger survived.

The tragedy shook the general public so thoroughly that the accident deeply undermined confidence in Canada’s floatplane industry. But what caused it? It was a classic chain of events seen often in aviation accidents, in which a series of seemingly unrelated errors line up in the worst possible way.

The TSB’s report detailed what went wrong: the plane was overloaded in the back end, making it more difficult to control. A strong wind propelled the plane toward a ridge, the pilot steered away, and the aircraft stalled. Unbeknownst to the pilot, the stall warning horn and lights weren’t working. The aircraft plunged into the water, and the seriously injured pilot couldn’t help passengers evacuate.

Thus began a prolonged back-and-forth between the TSB and Transport Canada over what should be required of the floatplane industry to prevent more loss of life. The investigation accelerated the push for egress training and a requirement that passengers wear lifejackets during the flight so they weren’t left groping for them in cold, dark waters after a crash. Both of those changes have taken effect in the last few years, over a decade after the Lyall Harbour crash.

But the vulnerability of the exits remains. The TSB investigation concluded that people aboard died because two of the four doors on the plane were jammed shut on impact. “Had all normal exits been usable or had there been other emergency exits, such as jettisonable windows, there would have been a greater chance of surviving the accident,” wrote TSB investigators.

Survivors’ families have since pushed for pop-out doors, a normal feature in many other airplane types. The TSB agreed, adding that to its list of recommended changes. But to become law, the recommendations must pass muster with Transport Canada, which, like the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States, also weighs other considerations, such as the economic impacts on the airline business. After consulting with experts, Transport Canada concluded that since planes would have to be redesigned and recertified, the cost of this recommendation was “too high” and did not justify the safety benefits.

Modernizing the fleet and regulations will go a long way toward protecting passengers and pilots—but no regulations can solve the deadliest problem in the Pacific Northwest: frigid water.

Wilderness guide Jenny Heap has firsthand experience with what happens when crash victims end up in a cold ocean. On the morning of September 30, 2016, Heap was kayaking solo in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. A heavy fog had descended over the region, but as she paddled near Lopez Island she noticed something odd in the distance. “I saw something bobbing on the surface, and I thought, ‘maybe it’s harbor seals’” she recalls. But then she heard someone yelling.

She had just stumbled on a seaplane crash.

There was no sign of the plane. When she reached the figures treading water, the tale came out: a Kenmore Air Beaver floatplane from Seattle had crashed just short of its destination on Lopez Island; the four people aboard—a pilot and three passengers—escaped but were disoriented. One man, the pilot, clung to a seat cushion. The others wore life jackets. Heap recognized the immediate danger of hypothermia: the cold water, about 10 ˚C, had sent the survivors into shock. In fact, they almost died before they were rescued by a coast guard vessel.

This accident barely attracted any notice at the time, since there were no fatalities. There was a brief probe in which it was determined that the pilot had been disoriented by the fog. But it highlighted a serious problem in floatplane safety that defies any simple solution: the inability to predict the weather and sea conditions.

“Unless you are in the Indian Ocean or some other tropical place, the water’s going to be cold,” says Gordon Giesbrecht, a retired University of Manitoba professor emeritus who is known as “Dr. Popsicle” for his studies of how to survive cold-water immersion emergencies—techniques he helped develop in a series of experiments using test subjects (including himself). He found that even when volunteers were dropped into water just above freezing—6 ˚C—hypothermia does not develop right away. It can take at least half an hour.

Giesbrecht came up with what he named the “1-10-1 Principle,” describing three critical phases of cold-water immersion. The first is cold shock, where you have one minute to stay calm and get control of your breathing. This is followed by a 10-minute phase, where you can still move and act to save yourself. And finally, hypothermia, a slow process that takes up to one hour to claim your consciousness. Knowing the phases may help delay its onset.

Webster teaches the phases and incorporates cold-water survival strategies into his training, emphasizing the urgency of huddling with fellow survivors and moving toward safety. But reality often plays out differently. In the 2016 Lopez Island crash, for example, the survivors were all close to shore. “But they had no idea where they were, because they were completely surrounded by a blanket of white fog,” said the survivors’ attorney. Had it not been for the chance encounter with a kayaker, their odds of survival would have been slim.

Despite the rare events that draw headlines, civil aviation is remarkably safe. Scheduled air travel is now enjoying its safest period in history, even with Boeing’s recent travails, due in large part to regulatory reforms and technological advances. In North America, the last major fatal accident on a commercial airline flight was in 2009, when a Continental commuter plane crashed outside of Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 aboard.

General aviation, which is a broader category of aviation, encompasses everything from sightseeing helicopters to small private planes. In Canada, while planes with floats have a higher fatality rate overall than planes on wheels, it’s tough to estimate accident rates, since seaplane operators are not required to report number of hours flown, and most operate for only six months a year. But hundreds of thousands of passengers take off every year in floatplanes and land safely.

Periodically, though, a string of mishaps will retrain the spotlight on seaplanes. In 2019, in a two-week period, three fatal seaplane crashes unfolded in quick succession in Alaska, killing a total of nine people and prompting the NTSB to issue a warning that seaplanes may no longer be a safe form of transport.

And then, on September 4, 2022, a de Havilland Canada Otter operated by Renton-based Friday Harbor Seaplanes abruptly plunged from the sky near Whidbey Island, Washington, killing all 10 people on board. Most crashes happen on takeoff and landing, but this accident occurred at cruising altitude, so there was no chance of survival, and no amount of egress training would have made any difference.

Although such accidents stoke the notion that seaplane travel is inherently risky, it’s still the only way to tie certain remote places together or connect them to the outside world. Plus, it’s a wonderful way to travel—as I learn the day before enduring my dunking at the hands of Bryan Webster.

It’s my first seaplane ride ever, and I’m grateful it wasn’t in the reverse order. I get to experience it as most fliers do, without thinking of all the things that can go wrong. I take off in clear skies from a dock on Seattle’s Lake Union for Victoria’s downtown harbor, in a 10-passenger Kenmore Air de Havilland Otter painted to resemble a killer whale. I’m on the milk run, a commuter service linking two city centers, and by cutting out the slog through commercial airports it’s the fastest route between the cities. For most of the one-hour flight, we’re barely above 600 meters, affording a close-up view of the scalloped coastline, with snowcapped mountains in the distance, and odd features like Dungeness Spit, a long, skinny sandbar that loops into the Juan de Fuca Strait from the Olympic Peninsula. I can understand why travelers gush about this experience.

I later learn that the plane I flew on was manufactured in 1954 (the cute paint job came a half-century later). Floatplanes can seem geriatric compared with commercial airline planes, but when this comes up in the egress training class, few of the pilots seem concerned. Several refer affectionately to flying the Grumman Goose, an aircraft that last rolled off the assembly line in the 1940s. Of the roughly 350 that were manufactured, 30 are still in service, including a number in Western Canada. Gord Jenkins, a seasoned commercial seaplane pilot in our class, says that “it’s not the age of the plane that matters, it’s how it is maintained.” And he would know—as a private pilot, he flies a Grumman Goose once owned by the Wall Street financier Robert Lehman, who in the 1940s used it to shuttle from his offices to his estate on Long Island. A California millionaire now owns the plane.

And though seaplanes are still manufactured, few observers expect the design to change drastically; the costs are just too high to justify the enormous investment required to overhaul an aircraft type that serves such a tiny niche. “Every few years you hear about some pretty good inventor coming up with some pretty good design for a new seaplane,” says Vance Hilderman, an aviation expert and CEO of AFuzion, an aerospace certification firm. “But the certification costs would be astronomical.” Although there is a futuristic all-electric “seaglider” in development in partnership with Alaska Airlines, and a few newer floatplane models, like the Caravan EX equipped with GPS and IFR (instrument flight rules), since older planes continue to function safely there’s less pressure to reinvent the wheel, he notes. Plus, Hilderman adds, many experts believe that since human error is a factor in many seaplane accidents, a better solution is to focus more on pilot training.

As Webster puts it, “You’ve always got to be on your game.” But it’s when the game puts you in the drink that you will really need the skills he pounds into us in this crash course in survival. While the atmosphere is at times jovial, there is a gnawing sense that this could be real someday. To survive really does take practice.

As an outside observer, whose chances of being in an underwater crash are exceedingly remote, I look back at my day in survival boot camp as both awe-inspiring and mortifying—especially after I fumble my way through another required underwater exercise in a bespoke tunnel meant to simulate an airplane cabin. I naively assume this will be the easier one, since I’m not upside down. Webster instructs us to descend into the water, swim forward into this contraption, feel your way to a door, open the handle, and slide out. But about 15 seconds in I have trouble finding a door, and with the clock ticking I flail around, hitting my fists against the faux side panels and ceiling. No longer able to hold my breath, I start ingesting water. Then, to my surprise—and that of the onlookers above—I free myself by blasting out through the flimsy top panel, which, in a real plane, would not be an option.

But perhaps if I were ever to be in an actual floatplane crash, whatever skills I gleaned from this ordeal would kick in. Months after I returned home, I connected with Tony McCormick, a Victoria-based marine safety entrepreneur who flies seaplanes as a means of commuting. He took his first egress training with Webster in 2006. “Of course, you never really believe you are going to need it,” he says. In 2015, in a freak accident, his tiny floatplane flipped over on Vancouver Island’s Lake Cowichan on a warm summer evening. It was harrowing. The force of the impact shattered the windshield, and water flooded the cockpit. In an instant, he says, he was upside down and almost three meters below the surface. “It could have been a failure of the pontoons, or an underwater hazard,” he says. “I will never know. But what I do know is the main reason I am alive and able to tell this story is that my training came back to me and overrode my urge to panic.”

Are seaplanes safe? Yes, especially if pilots take egress training and passengers know what to expect, ask the right questions, have adequate harnesses, and wear life vests. I’ll fly in a seaplane again, especially since I now know what to do if things don’t go well.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

Latest in Technology

Man with ai song catalog ‘defrauds’ streaming services of $10 million man with ai song catalog ‘defrauds’ streaming services of $10 million.

By Andrew Paul

This robot is being controlled by a King oyster mushroom This robot is being controlled by a King oyster mushroom

By Mack DeGeurin

IMAGES

Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale
Sunk by a whale in the middle of the Pacific ocean
Sailing crew rescued after giant whale sunk 44ft boat in Pacific Ocean
Sunk by whale in the Pacific Ocean >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News
Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale
SUNK BY A WHALE

VIDEO

The Whale That Sunk A Ship 😢
Sunken sailboat refloated 7/19/2024
“Killer”whale sunk the boat 😳😳 #tiktok #whale #shorts
Orca Attacks Boat During Race, Media Upset Incidents are called "Attacks"
Ungrounding a Sailboat Stuck In It's Slip at Hight Tide. Got It, But Couldn't Fully Resecure It
Sailboat Sink Lake Winnebago

COMMENTS

Sailing adventure ends in dramatic rescue after whale sinks boat in the
Friends' sailing adventure ends in a dramatic rescue after a whale sinks their boat in the Pacific. Rick Rodriguez and three of his friends had been on what was meant to be an epic adventure this ...
Rescued at sea: After a whale sank their sailboat, Florida crew
A sailboat headed to French Polynesia in the South Pacific sank after it was hit by a whale. The crew was rescued by another ship in about 10 hours. Hurricane-prone states The day in pictures Get ...
Sailboat Crew Rescued After Hitting Whale in Pacific Ocean
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 ...
A 'massive' whale destroyed a sailboat 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 ...
Group of friends rescued after their boat was hit by a massive whale in
A group of friends had to be rescued from the Pacific after their 44ft sailing boat sunk after being struck by a giant whale. Rick Rodriguez and three friends spent 10 hours on a lifeboat and ...
Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale
Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale. A picture of the Raindancer on a crossing from Panama to the Galapagos taken Feb. 3 using a drone. (Rick Rodriguez) His ...
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.
A Whale Smashed a Sailboat in the Pacific, Leaving Sailors Stranded
A 'massive' whale destroyed a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific, leaving 4 friends stranded for 10 hours. Sarah Al-Arshani. Mar 21, 2023, 12:03 PM PDT. A humpback whale shows its tail in front ...
How a sperm whale collision sank our yacht and sparked a mid-Pacific rescue
A Pacific crossing became a dramatic mid-ocean rescue for Peter Nielsen after his yacht collided with a young sperm whale. Photo: Amana Images Inc/Alamy. It's noon on Sunday, 23 August, and just ...
Pacific Sailboat Crew Rescued After Abandoning Ship Sunk by Whale
Pacific Sailboat Crew Rescued After Abandoning Ship Sunk by Whale Collision. On March 13th, a party of companions had already been sailing for 13 days from the Galápagos to French Polynesia on the Raindancer, a 44-foot sailboat. Suddenly, they heard a loud noise, and Rick Rodriguez, the owner of the boat, was in the middle of enjoying some ...
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 wh...
4 pals rescued in Pacific Ocean after whale sinks their boat
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 group speaks out after whale crashes into boat ...
Four friends on an excursion to Polynesia went into survival mode after a whale struck their boat, causing it to sink. The group waited nine hours in open wa...
Muksego man rescues 4 after whale sinks their boat in Pacific Ocean
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 ...
After whale sinks boat in the Pacific, Tennessee man helps with rescue
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 ...
SailBoat Sinks After Being Rammed By Whale in South Pacific
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).
Sailboat Crew Rescued At Sea After A Whale Sinks Their Ship
Rick Rodriguez and three friends were 13 days into their dream sailing trip when disaster struck — literally. While sailing from the Galápagos Islands to French Polynesia, at least one whale struck their boat and sank it. Rodriguez and the others spent ten hours at sea before they were rescued. "It just happened in an instant.
Four Sailors Rescued from Liferaft after SV Raindancer Hit by Whale in
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. By Karen Schwartz. ... 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 ...
Sunk by a Whale in Mid-Pacific
Sunk by a Whale in Mid-Pacific. "Tommy this is no joke," Rick Rodriguez 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 ...
Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after whale sinks ship
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.
I Survived a Whale Attack That Left My Family Stranded for 38 Days
On June 15, 1972, some 18 months after the family embarked on their voyage, the schooner was attacked by three killer whales in the Pacific Ocean. It forced the Robertsons and a hitchhiker to ...
Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale
Look for the Halberg-Rassy 48 that was sunk after being struck by a whale in 2015, near the Azores. It's name was Destiny. There were two impacts. The skipper believes they bumped into the sleeping whale while motoring, then the whale struck back with a heavy hit that cracked the hull.
52-ft whale washes up on San Diego's Pacific Beach
A dead 52-foot fin whale washed up on the beach off of Santa Rita Place near the border of Mission Beach and Pacific Beach on Sunday morning. The whale, which washed ashore before 9:30 a.m., was ...
Mystery over boat-ramming killer whales blamed for sinking yachts
WHALE OF A TIME Mystery over boat-ramming killer whales blamed for sinking yachts solved as scientists uncover reason for orca attacks
How do you keep pilots and passengers of sea planes safe?
I take off in clear skies from a dock on Seattle's Lake Union for Victoria's downtown harbor, in a 10-passenger Kenmore Air de Havilland Otter painted to resemble a killer whale.

Friends' sailing adventure ends in a dramatic rescue after a whale sinks their boat in the Pacific

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

A sinking feeling

‘Not a drill’

Around the World With The Times

Entertainment

New on Yahoo

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

Recommended Stories

Chicago Sky's Diamond DeShields responds to toxic fan after hard foul on Caitlin Clark

3 smart things to do when your savings account hits $10,000

Padres lose crusher to Tigers, giving up grand slam with 2 outs and 2 strikes in 9th inning

Only Amazon Prime members can score these 7 secret deals, starting at just $9

Data Dump Wednesday: 10 stats you need to know for Week 1 | Yahoo Fantasy Forecast

Caitlin Clark notches 2nd triple-double, creates 200-assist, 100 3-pointer club in Fever win

The US economy may be on 'thinner' ice than investors think

Carrie Underwood, 'Sunday Night Football' producers lift the lid on this year's 'very different' show open and how the singer took over for Faith Hill, Pink (exclusive)

Deion Sanders wonders why Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders didn't get more Week 1 recognition

The iOS 18 release date is this month but is your iPhone compatible? Here are the eligible devices and new features

Mortgage and refinance rates today, September 4, 2024: 30-year fixed still under 6%

A Minecraft Movie trailer gives us our first look at Jason Momoa and Jack Black ahead of its 2025 release

Taylor Swift supports Travis Kelce at Chiefs-Ravens game after false breakup contract circulates. They're 'going strong,' says source

Ford recalls 90,736 vehicles due to engine valve issue

US Open: USA's Emma Navarro rallies from 5-1 second-set deficit, will face Aryna Sabalenka in semifinals

Yankees have a closer problem, Justin Verlander's quest for 300 wins | Baseball Bar-B-Cast

Researchers discover potentially catastrophic exploit present in AMD chips for decades

Gunnar Henderson passes Cal Ripken Jr., Miguel Tejada for most home runs in a season by an Orioles shortstop

2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoff preview, predictions: Will there be another first-time champion?

UK Edition Change

Thank you for registering

‘Tommy this is not a joke’: Friends send mayday message as boat sinks in Pacific after being hit by whale

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

Join our commenting forum

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale

More travel news

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

Pacific Sailboat Crew Rescued After Abandoning Ship Sunk by Whale Collision

Want to Stay In the Loop?

latest in US News

Trump appears at Manhattan federal court as lawyers seek to...

Newlyweds charged with murdering their groomsman on their wedding...

Hunter Biden reveals why he stunningly pleaded guilty in $1.4M...

New audio reveals how Colt Gray's father reacted to police when...

Pets strut their stuff at NYFW charity show: 'They have very big...

Ga. shooting suspect warned he will face life in prison, dad sobs...

Biden trashes Trump in Wisconsin visit, comparing himself to FDR,...

Human remains believed to be hundreds of years old found on...

Sailboat Sinks After Collision with Whale in South Pacific

29 Comments

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Four Sailors Rescued from Liferaft after SV Raindancer Hit by Whale in South Pacific

Key Communications in An Offshore Rescue

This is the Captain, Rick Rodriquez, of Raindancer’s first account posted on Facebook.

BOLO Ended (0615z): Final Update: All four (crew + Captain) have been rescued.

All Reports for…

Top 5 Maritime Tech startups in Australasia

U.S. Coast Guard returns 109 migrants to Dominican Republic

Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after whale sinks ship

Share this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Sign Up for Our Newsletters

I Survived a Whale Attack That Left My Family Stranded in the Ocean for 38 Days (Exclusive)

Related Articles

52-ft whale washes up on San Diego's Pacific Beach

These San Diego senior pets are still searching for their forever homes

Clear the shelters pet of the day, Thursday, Sept. 5: Sebastian

This article tagged under:

MORE SECTIONS

MORE FROM THE SUN

Mystery over boat-ramming killer whales blamed for sinking yachts solved as scientists uncover reason for orca attacks

Most read in News Tech

Major bargain chain with 600 locations to close ALL stores on Boxing Day

Bodies of babies and children discovered among remains of 300 in mass grave

US school 'shooter's' dad charged with murder over 'son's rampage that killed 4'

Sir Terry Wogan's wife Helen dies as son pays tribute to 'beautiful' mum

READ MORE SUN STORIES

BBC drama that last aired TWO decades ago makes shock return to screen

Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy welcomes second child and reveals name

Orcas - How dangerous are they?