40-Ton Whale Crashes Onto Boat

It was the ideal South African boat cruise -- until a 40-ton southern right whale crashed through the deck of Ralph Mothes and his girlfriend Paloma Werner's yacht.

The couple were sailing around Hermanus, a popular destination 130 km (80 miles) north of Cape Town, when they spotted a whale breaching about 100 metres away.

The whale soon reappeared, surfacing 10 metres away from their boat, the Intrepid, in an unwitting attempt to board.


"I assumed it would go underneath the boat but instead it sprang out of the sea," Werner is reported saying in London's Guardian newspaper.

The two took cover as the whale collapsed on to their deck, thrashing against the rails and rigging and bringing down the mast before slipping back into the sea.

"It really was quite incredible but very scary. The whale was about the same size as the boat," she said.

We were very lucky to get through it, as the sheer weight of the thing was huge."

There were bits of skin and blubber left behind," she added.

A tourist from Botswana, who was a passenger on a sightseeing boat nearby, was able to capture the whale's leap onto the couple's deck with his camera. The first shot shows the right whale breaching and careening towards Mothes as he steers the yacht. The second shows the collapsed rigging and mast lying across the levelled boat, after the whale hit.

Mothes and Werner credit their survival to the fact their boat had a steel hull, preventing any structural damage. They speculate that if the boat had been made out of fibreglass it would have disintegrated into the ocean.

Exactly why the whale decided to jump onto their boat is unknown, but Meredith Thornton, scientist and manager of the Cape Town Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, speculated in the Daily Mail that the young whale simply didn't realize the boat, with its engines turned off, was there.

"Whales don't see much by way of their eyes but by sound in the water," she told the paper.

Mothes and Warner, who are both experienced sailors and run the Cape Town Sailing Academy, were able to power the yacht back to Table Bay shore using its engine.

An investigation has been launched by marine protection officials into claims the whale was being harassed by boats in the area before it jumped, reports South Africa's Independent Online.

Crew members on a nearby boat that offers whale-watching trips reported seeing a rigid inflatable raft and then a yacht harassing the right whale.

"They said the yacht kept coming to the whale. Speeding straight at it and annoying it," Richard Smith, manager of the whale-watching company, the Waterfront Boat Company, told the Independent Online.

Boats are legally required to stay 300m away from whales and move away if they are approached by them.

Alan Boyd, manager for marine protection and endangered species at South Africa's environment department, told the Independent Online: "We are aware of the statements that indicate that a person was deliberately sailing towards the whale and harassing it. It's good enough (reason) to investigate."

Mothes and Werner will be questioned as part of the investigation.