Beware Of Whales!

ONE of the hazards of being a blue-water yachtsman these days is the possibility of being attacked by a whale, or a school of whales.

In the past 18 months, PIM has reported two instances of yachts being charged and damaged by whales. The first was in September, 1964 (p. 107) when the 50 ft American yacht Easterling was badly holed by a whale between the Galapagos Islands and Marquesas. The second whale story came from Rarotonga {PIM, July, 1965, p. 25) after a whale smashed the port and starboard floats of the New Zealand trimaran Highlight en route from New Zealand to Rapa, French Polynesia.

Now we have reports of two more whale incidents—and although both occurred in the Indian Ocean, they involved yachts that were recently in the Pacific.

In the first case, the 30 ft trimaran Cosa Nostra, which spent some time in Rabaul in 1964, was attacked by a whale off the island of Madagascar. The result?. The rudder was broken off.

Cosa Nostra, which had been making for Durban, reached that port with a jury rudder made from timber and screws from her inside.

The trimaran left Japan in May, 1964, for the United States with Tom Schultz, 22, Doug Bartlett, 22, both Americans, and Peter Wetzel, 28, a German. She is the first vessel of her kind to cross the Indian Ocean.

The second recent whale incident involved lone-hander Frank Casper, of Florida, US, who is sailing round the world in his 30 ft cutter Elsie.

Casper left Port Moresby last June for Cocos Island, Mauritius and Durban.

“One thousand miles off Cocos Island,” Casper told a correspondent in Durban on his arrival there in November, “I got the fright of my life when a big school of whales circled the boat for 20 minutes. I had heard of two yachts being attacked by them. But thank goodness they left without doing any harm.”

Elsie did the 2,400 miles from Cocos to Mauritius in 24 days, and the leg from Mauritius to Durban in 18 days.