Boo!

By 6000 | 6000 | July 20, 2010

There you are – happily sailing away in Table Bay, the most intrepid part of your day being the name of your yacht and then:

Boo!

Yep. That would be a Southern Right whale (probably a calf) jumping  - or breaching, to be technically correct – onto the yacht belonging to the Cape Town Sailing Academy.

No Photoshopping here folks – this is the real deal, as reported by Joyanne’s SA Portfolio Travel blog and local newspaper Die Burger (which might be a bit Afrikaans for some readers).

The result: No injuries to crew. No apparent injury to whale.
R150,000 ($20,000) worth of injury to yacht.
Ouch!

UPDATE: And now there’s video of the allegedly harassed whale doing its thing.

Posted in that's a bit mad, this is south africa and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

5 Comments

  1. Tara
    Posted July 20, 2010 at 2:28 pm | Permalink

    First of all; the skipper should NOT have been that close to a pod of whales. I believe the minimum recommended distance is 50m…and don’t try and tell me he didn’t notice them!
    Secondly, judging by the photo, both skipper and calf must have got a hell of a fright!

  2. 6000
    Posted July 20, 2010 at 2:39 pm | Permalink

    Tara > Reading the account on the Portfolio blog – seems like it happened pretty quickly:

    “We had been taking some pictures and had just decided to head back when a Southern Right whale, between 11 – 14 m long, breached about 100 meters away from us. It then suddenly breached about 10 meters from us and then – right on us! We were sailing so had no engine and we could not even take any action. Scary!”

    But yes. Very frightening for all concerned.

  3. Wiggy
    Posted July 20, 2010 at 3:11 pm | Permalink

    Ouch indeed! That looks crazy

  4. Pamela
    Posted July 21, 2010 at 1:16 pm | Permalink

    Oops! The area had not been child(calf)proofed before he was let out to play.

  5. Tara
    Posted July 22, 2010 at 1:26 pm | Permalink

    http://goo.gl/i66o
    :D

2 Trackbacks

  1. By Tweets that mention Boo! | 6000 miles from civilisation... -- Topsy.com on July 20, 2010 at 2:26 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg McDavid and cazpi, 6000. 6000 said: *NewBlogPost*: Boo! http://6000.co.za/boo/ [...]

  2. By Best line ever on the Cape Times letters page | 6000 miles from civilisation... on July 23, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    [...] to come out of Cape Town since the Holland v Uruguay World Cup semi-final: that already infamous collision between flying whale and sailing yacht. The question now being asked is whether the whale had been “harassed” by boats before [...]

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