News from the South Pacific for the cruisers here. On Saturday the Australian yacht Tai Tam, 51ft with four aboard, hit a whale about 250nm north of Norfolk Island, which is the open water between New Caledonia and New Zealand. The EPIRB went off at about 1pm NZ time, she was taking on water and going down, the crew abandoned to the life raft, and a 143m cargo ship had them aboard at about 6am Sunday. Everyone safe. Maritime NZ said the crew did everything right and the early EPIRB activation was what got them found. Nothing yet on what type of boat or where she opened up.
We sail that stretch every year between NZ and Fiji on a Fusion 40 catamaran, so it made us sit down and go through what we would actually do. A few things that came out of it:
The strike is almost never on the bow. At 6 or 7 knots the whale is asleep on the surface or coming up under you, so it lands where the boat is deepest and the gear sticks out. Monohull: keel, rudder, skeg, prop shaft. Raindancer (Kelly Peterson 44, 2023) was hit on the propeller, the load burst the shaft log and she was gone in about 15 minutes. Cat: hull skin low down, saildrive leg or rudder. One Tree Island (Atlantic 46, 2020) took two cracks in the port hull, flooded that hull to chest height and stopped there. They never launched the raft.
The other thing we took from One Tree Island's crew: the one item they wished they had was a bag of cricket ball sized epoxy putty balls. Cheap, and going on our list.
The full write up, including the first ten minutes on our boat, where the EPIRB and raft need to live, and what we do not know, is here: Whale Strike on a Yacht: What We'd Do on a Catamaran
What do people here carry for stopping a hole, and has anyone had to use it for real?
We sail that stretch every year between NZ and Fiji on a Fusion 40 catamaran, so it made us sit down and go through what we would actually do. A few things that came out of it:
The strike is almost never on the bow. At 6 or 7 knots the whale is asleep on the surface or coming up under you, so it lands where the boat is deepest and the gear sticks out. Monohull: keel, rudder, skeg, prop shaft. Raindancer (Kelly Peterson 44, 2023) was hit on the propeller, the load burst the shaft log and she was gone in about 15 minutes. Cat: hull skin low down, saildrive leg or rudder. One Tree Island (Atlantic 46, 2020) took two cracks in the port hull, flooded that hull to chest height and stopped there. They never launched the raft.
The other thing we took from One Tree Island's crew: the one item they wished they had was a bag of cricket ball sized epoxy putty balls. Cheap, and going on our list.
The full write up, including the first ten minutes on our boat, where the EPIRB and raft need to live, and what we do not know, is here: Whale Strike on a Yacht: What We'd Do on a Catamaran
What do people here carry for stopping a hole, and has anyone had to use it for real?