Four sailors rescued in South Pacific after sperm whales sink 16-metre yacht
A crew of four abandoned their sinking 16-metre vessel into a life raft north of Norfolk Island following a collision with a pod of sperm whales, surviving 18 hours before a container ship picked them up.
Impact in the South Pacific
A crew of four sailors was navigating the 16-metre Australian-flagged yacht Tai Tam across the South Pacific on a voyage from Fiji to New Zealand when a pod of whales struck the vessel. The collision occurred last weekend approximately 250 nautical miles (about 460 kilometres) north of Norfolk Island, roughly 500 nautical miles north of the New Zealand coast. Australian sailor Jemma Cooper was steering at the helm when a sudden heavy blow hit the vessel, throwing her away from the wheel. Looking out across the port side, the crew identified between six and eight sperm whales swimming beside the vessel.
There was a loud thump, and the boat was shoved sideways.
Structural damage and emergency efforts
Jemma Cooper's husband, Jeremy Cooper, was sleeping in a cabin beneath the deck when the impact woke him up. Upon examining the interior and exterior of the yacht, the sailors found severe structural damage across the hull. The steering mechanism on the starboard side was completely destroyed, three or four holes had punctured the fiberglass, and fractures spread through the boat's frame. French crew member and carpenter Martin Jaffré dove into the water beneath the yacht to inspect the outer hull and attempted to seal the breaches using expanding foam, while the remaining crew members manually pumped and bailed water to stop the engine from fouling.
It was pretty obvious straight away that it was very serious. All the steering gear was smashed on the starboard side, and a lot of water was coming in.
Roughly 30 minutes after the collision, at 13:00 New Zealand time on Saturday (24:00 GMT on Friday), New Zealand crew member Terry Hetherington activated an emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) and broadcast a Mayday distress call.
Search operation and vessel abandonment
The Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand detected the EPIRB distress signal and tasked a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to locate the vessel. The aircraft established radio contact with the sailors, took surveillance photographs of the damaged yacht, and helped coordinate response efforts with commercial maritime traffic. Despite continuous efforts by the four crew members to bail water and maintain power, steering remained impossible, and water ingress continued to threaten the hull.
Late on Saturday night, the crew abandoned the sinking yacht and boarded an inflatable life raft under calm seas and a full moon. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the crew cut the mooring tether connecting the raft to the yacht, fearing the sinking vessel would pull their life raft down into the ocean. Shortly after the line was cut, the yacht disappeared beneath the waves.
- Whales strike the yacht Tai Tam, and the crew activates an EPIRB distress beacon
- An RNZAF P-8A Poseidon aircraft establishes radio communication and coordinates shipping
- The crew abandons the damaged yacht and boards an inflatable life raft
- Sailors cut the tether to the sinking yacht shortly before the vessel goes under
- The container ship MV Sofrana Surville rescues the four sailors
Rescue by container vessel
At 06:00 New Zealand time on Sunday (17:00 GMT on Saturday), approximately 18 hours after the whale collision, the 143-metre commercial container ship MV Sofrana Surville arrived at the life raft's location. The four sailors boarded the freighter via an exterior ladder over a 30-minute operation, where the ship's captain received them and heard their account of the encounter.
