Orca Attack
Four crew members aboard a sailing boat were rescued after being rammed by a group of orcas while heading towards Gibraltar.
The impact of the killer whales caused significant damage to the sailboat, including a broken rudder and a crack in the stern of the vessel.
“We were sailing with the mainsail and a wind between 7 and 8 knots when suddenly there was a loud crash. At first I thought we had hit a stop but then I quickly realized that they were orcas attacking the ship”, comments Werner Schaufelberger, skipper of the Sun Odyssey 519 sailboat, sunk at the entrance to the port of Barbate due to the damage caused
None of the four crew members were injured, but the incident was very violent and caused serious damage to the boat, with loss of the rudder and ruptures in the hull that caused an ingress of water that could not be removed even with the help of powerful bombs.
“The attacks were brutal. There were two smaller orcas and one larger one. The two little ones shook the rudder while the big one kept running and then he rammed the ship from the side with all the force of it ”
The sinking is the most serious case of some 20 orca attacks on boats registered since the beginning of this year on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal.
