Orcas (killer whales) destroy the rudder of a yacht on delivery off the Coast of Spain

[Music] well we left gibraltar uh just after midday after uh some repairs to the engine uh we had the beginnings of a levanta so as we came down towards the reefer the winds got fresher and fresher from the east um our strategy upon talking to people was to get in as close to the coast as possible around about the 20 meter mark to try and avoid any confrontation with the orcas and so i did as close as i've ever been we clipped the first cape here and then just followed the coastline um thought everything was going well until about 1800 hours almost a beam of barbat i was on watch the autopilot was on and i suddenly noticed the wheel spinning so i killed the autopilot killed the engine turned off all the electrics pulled in all the sails and then they started basically to play with us for the next two hours um hitting continuously hitting the rudder but also sort of almost three or four the three of them are pressed pushing the boat around quite quite a lot it was never very aggressive but they're obviously very big heavy powerful animals so at some point i was on a lee shore i had uh cape to falgo in the offline reefs about three to four miles downwind of me so we had to we pulled out the mizzen and some of the genoa and just slowly started to get some serum as soon as we started sailing they became a bit more active they made them a little bit more interested uh and they started hitting the rudder quite a lot more and make it quite hard to hold a course um as soon as i had the sea room we had the sails back in and we just uh lay a hole really maybe we just had the mizzen up told us and they carried on until i don't you know what i think they realize they've broken the rudder and they just suddenly all disappeared um and then of course when we tried to start sailing again we discovered we had it was very very hard to steer um and we sort of crabbed our way up towards cadiz using the the mizzen the engine and when we actually got into cadiz could be as we had to start using the bow thruster just to try and stay on course and we've uh we've managed to manage to get into puerto sherry which is up here we're anchored in on the breakwater uh here and we're waiting for waiting for the wind to drop so that we can get into the marina we've looked at the rudder and it significantly damaged quite a lot of delamination and actually looks like [Music] they've broken the rudder stock as well so luckily amazingly actually managed to get here under our own steam to be honest anyway that's us [Music]

Channel: Halcyon Yachts - International Yacht Delivery

Views: 163,043

Keywords: halcyon, yachts, international, professional, yacht, delivery, sailing, boat, transport, orca, orcas, off, the, coast, of, spain, portugal, gibraltar, barbate, atlantic, sea, ocean, wild, life, killer, whale, attack, sail, what, to, do, if, pyd, reliance, crew, yachting, danger, dangerous, damage, rudder, hull, scary, nightmare, survived

Id: Y-CYjFy_Alg

Length: 3min 27sec (207 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021