A yacht's brush with a sperm whale in the South Pacific ended with four sailors bobbing in a life raft for 17 hours. Authorities say the Australian vessel Tai Tam was about 250 nautical miles north of Norfolk Island on Sept. 26 when it struck a whale and began flooding, prompting a Mayday call, People reports. Australian sailor Jemma Cooper tells the BBC she felt a violent jolt that hurled her across the boat. She says she saw six whales, including "one or two huge ones" as long as the boat. Her husband, Jeremy Cooper, says they called a Mayday because it "was pretty clear the situation was likely to be unrecoverable and given our location, 500 nautical miles north of New Zealand."
After bailing out water and trying to stay afloat as long as possible, the crew abandoned ship and awaited help in a raft as rescue agencies diverted nearby vessels. A New Zealand Defence Force aircraft coordinated with ships in the area, and a 469-foot cargo vessel, the MV Sofrana Surville, eventually pulled the sailors aboard around 6am Sunday. "The crew of the yacht did all the right things, and it was unfortunate to have struck a whale in open water," Rescue Coordination Center Operations Manager Mike Clulow said in a news release. He said their early activation of the emergency beacon "was key to helping get them to safety."
Terry Hetherington, a sailor from New Zealand, tells 1News that he heard a "very, very loud bang" as the ship hit the whale. "I jumped up, I grabbed the wheel, tried to turn the wheel. There was no movement," he says. Hetherington says he saw a pod of around five whales nearby but "didn't see anything of the whale that was hit." He says the weather was calm at the time, but "if it had happened 24 hours beforehand, the outcome could be significantly different." Stepping on board the container ship, he says, was a "massive relief."
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