yacht sunk by whale

Friends' sailing adventure ends in a dramatic rescue after a whale sinks their boat in the Pacific

What started as a sailing adventure for one man and three of his friends ended in a dramatic rescue after a giant whale sank his boat, leaving the group stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for hours and with a tale that might just be stranger than fiction.

Rick Rodriguez and his friends had been on what was meant to be a weekslong crossing to French Polynesia on his sailboat, Raindancer, when the crisis unfolded just over a week ago.

They had been enjoying some pizza for lunch when they heard a loud bang.

"It just happened in an instant. It was just a very violent impact with some crazy-sounding noises and the whole boat shook," Rodriguez told NBC's "TODAY" show in an interview that aired Wednesday.

"It sounded like something broke and we immediately looked to the side and we saw a really big whale bleeding,” he said.

The impact was so severe that the boat's propeller was ruptured and the fiberglass around it shattered, sending the vessel into the ocean.

As water began to rush into the boat, the group snapped into survival mode.

"There was just an incredible amount of water coming in, very fast," Rodriguez said.

Alana Litz, a member of the crew, described the ordeal as "surreal."

"Even when the boat was going down, I felt like it was just a scene out of a movie. Like everything was floating," she said.

Rodriguez and his friends acted fast, firing off mayday calls and text messages as they activated a life raft and dinghy.

He said he sent a text message to his brother Roger in Miami and to a friend, Tommy Joyce, who was sailing a "buddy boat" in the area as a safety measure.

“Tommy this is no joke," Rodriguez wrote in a text message. "We hit a whale and the ship went down."

"We are in the life raft," he texted his friend. "We need help *ASAP."

Raindancer sank within about 15 minutes, the group said. Their rescue took much longer that, with the four friends out on the open waters for roughly nine hours before they could be sure they would live to tell the tale.

Peruvian officials picked up the group's distress signal and the U.S. Coast Guard was alerted, with its District 11 in Alameda, California, being in charge of U.S. vessels in the Pacific.

Ultimately, it was another sailing vessel, the Rolling Stones, that came to the group's aid after Joyce shared the incident on a Facebook boat watch group.

Geoff Stone, captain of the Rolling Stones, said they were about 60 or 65 miles away when his crew members realized that their vessel was the closest boat.

After searching the waters, they were eventually able to locate the group of friends.

“We were shocked that we found them," Stone said.

The timing of the rescue, which unfolded at night, appeared to be critical as the Stones' crew members were able to see the light from the dinghy bobbing in the darkness.

Rodriguez lost his boat and the group of friends said they also lost their passports and many of their possessions, but they said they were just grateful to be alive.

The severity of the injuries sustained by the whale were not immediately clear.

Kate Wilson, a spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission, told The Washington Post, which first reported the story, that there have been about 1,200 reports of whales and boats colliding since a worldwide database launched in 2007.

Collisions causing significant damage are rare, the Coast Guard told the outlet. It noted that the last rescue attributed to impact from a whale was the sinking of a 40-foot J-Boat in 2009 off Baja California. The crew in that incident was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter.

One member of Raindancer's sailing crew, Bianca Brateanu, said the more recent incident, however harrowing, left her feeling more confident in her survival skills.

“This experience made me realize how, you know how capable we are, and how, how skilled we are to manage and cope with situations like this,” she said.

In an Instagram post, Rodriguez said he would remember his boat "for the rest of my life."

"What’s left of my home, the pictures on the wall, belongings, pizza in the oven, cameras, journals, all of it, will forever be preserved by the sea," he said.

"As for me, I had a temporary mistrust in the ocean. But I’m quickly realizing I’m still the same person," Rodriguez wrote. “I often think about the whale who likely lost its life, but is hopefully ok. I'm not sure what my next move will be. But my attraction to the sea hasn’t been shaken."

Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.

Sam Brock is an NBC News correspondent.

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Breaking news, killer whales sink $128k yacht in ‘terrifying’ 2-hour mediterranean sea attack: ‘like watching wolves hunt’.

Orcas relentlessly battered a yacht in a “terrifying” two-hour attack Wednesday that didn’t end until the $128,680 vessel sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Robert Powell, 59, and his crew were just 22 hours into their 10-day trip from Vilamoura, Portugal, to Greece when the pod set its sights on the £100,000 — or $128,680 — sailing boat.

“To me, they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat, and they knew how to sink it,” Powell, who was meant to be celebrating his birthday aboard the boat, told SWNS.

“Their sole intention was to sink the boat, and that was it.”

The five orcas circled the 39-foot sailing boat and took turns smashing it to bits around 8 p.m. in a coordinated assault Powell compared to the carnage of wolves.

The IT company owner said he felt the first hit on the bottom of the boat, named the Bonhomme William, and assumed they had run over a rock.

“Whilst I was looking around the boat to see if I could see anything — I was doing about 5 to 6 knots — it got hit again,” Powell recalled.

“On the second hit, I looked over the back of the boat, and I could see the dark shape of a killer whale in the water.”

The pod of five first focused on the rudder, rendering the sailboat unable to steer after about 15 hits.

That’s when the orcas separated and each concentrated on their own section of the boat’s exterior, including the keel and stern.

“They were circling. It was like watching wolves hunt,” Powell said.

“They were taking it in turns to come in — sometimes two would come in at the same time and hit it. So obviously pretty terrifying.”

It took an hour and a half until the hull finally buckled beneath the whales’ pressure and split, causing water to gush into the main living area of the Bonhomme William.

Though they were just two miles off the coast of Spain — and the crew radioed for help as soon as the attack began — it took two hours before help arrived.

A Spanish salvage vessel fortunately helped them abandon the stricken ship, minutes before it sunk 130 feet below the Mediterranean’s surface.

Powell — who lost his birthday trip and his ritzy boat — said he tried everything from dropping firecrackers in the water and turning off the engine to deter the attack, but the pod was determined.

“It was a very long attack, and it was really the violence of the attack that surprised me,” he said.

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The former boat owner believes the pod — which included two juveniles — could be the same group responsible for terrorizing other skippers in European waters in recent years.

“I have a feeling that this group are boat sinkers — I think they knew what they were doing, I’m sure of it,” Powell said.

In May, a pack of killer whales sank a 50-foot yacht in Moroccan waters after repeatedly slamming into the vessel.

Orcas also interfered with a sailing race last year when a boat traveling from the Netherlands to Italy had a 15-minute showdown with the mammals. The crew was forced to drop its sails and make a ruckus to repel them.

Some studies suggest orcas are targeting boats for fun.

“It’s only a matter of time before someone shoots one of these killer whales,” Powell ominously warned.

“The fight between man and beast is going to get worse. Luckily none of us were in the water or got hurt.

“And it’s a lottery as to whether they hit you or not.”

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Rescued at sea: After a whale sank their sailboat, Florida crew stranded in South Pacific

• A 44-foot sailing ship, Raindancer, was hit by a whale on March 13, sinking the boat in the South Pacific.
• The four people on board were adrift in a life raft and dinghy with a satellite phone and some supplies.
• Phone calls, texts and social media helped lead another ship, the Rolling Stones, to rescue the castaways in about 10 hours.

A lifelong dream sailing trip turned into a potentially life-threatening ordeal for a four-person crew after a whale shipwrecked their boat.

Rick Rodriguez, owner of the sailing ship Raindancer, and three crewmembers onboard were amidst a voyage of more than 3,000 nautical miles to French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The 44-foot cruising boat had left the Galapagos at the end of February, after passing through the Panama Canal three weeks earlier.

The crew would make it to French Polynesia, but not in the manner expected.

More than halfway to the Marquesas Islands, disaster struck: They were eating homemade pizza for lunch "when it felt like we ran into a concrete wall," Rodriguez recalled in a note posted March 14 on the Facebook Boatwatch Group .

"I heard a loud crashing noise simultaneous with a metal clanking. I heard (crewmember) Alana (Litz) yell, 'we hit a whale,' then I looked to port and saw a huge whale, and blood gushing out of the side of it as it began swimming down."

"It felt like a scene out of a movie," Litz told NBC's Today show during an interview posted Wednesday . 

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A whale of an emergency in the South Pacific

A former professional yacht captain, Rodriguez saw that the collision "opened up multiple holes (and) cracks near the stern of the boat and the water was up to the floorboards within about 30 seconds. Maybe less," he said in a post on Instagram .

About the boat, which he purchased in 2021 and had lived on, Rodriguez said, "I made attempts to save the boat but I was, unfortunately, unsuccessful."

The crew quickly gathered safety equipment, some supplies including water, emergency gear and  electronics including a satellite phone, satellite Wi-Fi hotspot and a power bank. The dinghy was launched and loaded. Rodriguez used a VHF radio on board to make a mayday call and set off an emergency beacon, he told The Washington Post .

Before Raindancer "took her last breath about 15 minutes after she got hit," Rodriguez said, the crew were in a dinghy and a lifeboat was deployed. "I’m proud of the way our crew handled the situation, and the first priority on any boat is always the safety of the crew and passengers," he said on Instagram.

Rescue mission: Wisconsin man sailing around the world rescues castaway crew in South Pacific

Now adrift, seafarers awaited rescue

Rodriguez, 31, of Tavernier, Florida, activated a Globalstar SPOT tracker, which regularly transmits its location, and continued sending a mayday call hourly on the radio, The Post reported.

Meanwhile, the crew's distress signal had been picked up by officials in Peru, who alerted the U.S. Coast Guard, The Post reported. 

A commercial ship 90 miles to the south changed course toward the castaways after getting an urgent broadcast from the Coast Guard and there were also about two dozen boats participating in an around-the-world yachting rally sailing a similar route, the Post reported.

With the crew in the dinghy and life raft, Rodriguez sent a text message to friend Tommy Joyce, a sailor whose boat was about 180 miles behind on the same route, as a safety precaution..

“Tommy this is no joke,” he typed. “We hit a whale and the ship went down.”

“Tell as many boats as you can,” Rodriguez said. “Battery is dangerously low.”

Rodriguez also texted his brother, Roger, in Miami, to let him and his mother know the situation. He also asked his brother to relay their location via WhatsApp to Joyce. 

Online lifeline helps save South Pacific castaways

Joyce also posted a note about the incident on the Facebook page for  Boatwatch , a volunteer network of amateur radio operators who search for missing boats and people lost at sea.

"It was the Boatwatch group that ended up having somebody on there who knew" a 45-foot catamaran called the Rolling Stones was the closest boat, Joyce told Today.

"I think we were about 60-65 miles away when we realized that we were the closest boat," the boat's captain Geoff Stone told Today. 

Stone of Muskego, Wisconsin, was circumnavigating the globe aboard the Rolling Stones, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , part of the USA TODAY Network.

When they learned about the boat's dilemma, the crew didn't hesitate. "It was going to take us a while to get there, but we were going to change our course," said Mark Moriarty, Stone's father-in-law, who was also on board.

When Rodriguez turned on the satellite radio and hotspot two hours later, there was a message from Joyce: “We got you bud.”

Rescue ship used beacon, coordinates for nighttime recovery

Just more than nine hours later, the crew on Rolling Stones saw the flashing light of the dinghy and rescued the castaways. As the Rolling Stones approached, they spotted a beacon and a flare and the crews communicated via radio.

"I thought for sure the hardest part was going to be locating them," Stone said. "Luckily with the new technologies ... the latest coordinates we were given was all very accurate."

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Stone, reached on his vessel on the way to an island in French Polynesia, told the Journal Sentinel the last few days have been "a real humbling experience."

"The right place at the right time to help them out was just by chance," he said. "I'm really glad and happy that we were able to do that."

Rodriguez mourned the loss of his ship, Raindancer, on Instagram, saying it "had all my belongings on it … it was my ticket to exploring the world, she was my refuge, my rock, the one place I could be where I felt myself, she was my friend, I would give to her and she would give back memories, lessons, and stories. … In the end, she was lost at sea, and left myself and the crew with one last incredible story."

Contributing: Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter:  @mikesnider .

Watch CBS News

Killer whales attack and sink sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar — again

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: May 14, 2024 / 4:54 PM EDT / CBS News

A sailing yacht sunk in the Strait of Gibraltar on Sunday after an unknown number of orcas  slammed into the vessel with two people on board and caused a water leak, officials said. Both crew members were rescued by a passing oil tanker, said Spain's maritime rescue service, marking the latest killer whale attack on a boat in what has become a pattern in recent years.

The incident happened at around 9 a.m. local time in the narrow strait between Spain and Morocco that has become a notorious site of human interactions with pods of killer whales that, for reasons still not fully understood, ram into boats and at times even sink them . In this case, crew members on board the SV Alboran Cognac yacht put out an emergency call for an evacuation after they encountered orcas roughly 14 miles off the coast of Cape Spartel. 

The crew members reported feeling blows to the hull of the vessel and rudder, which was damaged by the whales, the rescue service said. The agency's coordination center in Tarifa, on the Spanish side of the Strait of Gibraltar, helped arrange for their evacuation via the tanker MT Lascaux. The tanker was able to collect the crew members from the sinking yacht within the hour, and they disembarked in Gibraltar before 10:30 a.m. They abandoned the SV Alboran Cognac, which proceeded to completely disappear into the ocean.

Anyone sailing through waters from the Gulf of Cádiz in southern Spain and the Strait of Gibraltar, either in a larger motorized vessel or a personal sailing boat, is advised to avoid certain areas that the maritime rescue service marks as potentially dangerous spots for orca interactions. The greatest threats exist between May and August, when officials say that pods of killer whales are most commonly seen in those parts of the Atlantic. 

But previously recorded incidents suggest those dangers may be present at any time. Last October, a Polish boat touring company reported that a pod of orcas had managed to sink one of its yachts after repeatedly slamming into the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing it to leak. Last June, two sailing teams competing in an international race around the world reported frightening scenarios in which multiple orcas rammed into or pushed up against their boats or as they sailed west of Gibraltar. 

No one on board any of the vessels was hurt in those encounters, but the documented rise in confrontational behavior has researchers and sailors trying to determine why orcase have attempted to sink or capsize so many boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal. 

Some sailors have even resorted to blasting thrash metal music in a bid to deter the apex predators.

Reports of orcas interacting with humans have more than tripled in the last two years or so, according to the research group GTOA, which has documented hundreds of such incidents in the region since 2020. But some of the latest data points to possible changes in the orcas' etiquette, with the group reporting only 26 interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar and Bay of Biscay areas between January and May of this year. That number is 65% lower than the number of interactions recorded in the region over the same months last year, and 40% lower than the average number of interactions recorded in the same months between 2021 and 2023, according to GTOA.

• Boat Accident

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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Sailboat Sinks After Collision with Whale in South Pacific

It was like an excerpt from a Herman Melville book: “Vessel has sunk. They were hit by a whale.” Those words were shared across social media channels on Monday as sailors networked to send aid to the stricken crew of Raindancer (we believe a Kelly Peterson 44). Also in the shared post were the words “Not a drill.”

The post was created by Tommy Joyce, a member of Facebook’s “Starlink on Boats” group. Tommy is a friend of Raindancer ‘s owner, Rick Rodriguez, and was alerting the boating community to the situation. “They hit [have] a liferaft and have Iridium on board.”

They were almost in the middle of the Pacific with no other boats in sight. But a successful rescue was coordinated through the power of social media and modern communications, including new kid on the block Starlink.

We contacted Paul Tetlow, managing director of World Cruising Club, who is operating as “rally control” for the World ARC cruising rally. He told us that upon learning of Raindancer ‘s demise and the position of the crew, he contacted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) who then assigned MRCC Peru to coordinate the rescue. But before the official rescue had been executed, a network of communications had quickly arisen, much of it via Starlink, and around eight ARC vessels diverted their course to assist Raindancer ‘s crew. Along the way, ARC participants aboard S/V Far were able to keep up the communications with the lifeboat using Iridium and Starlink.

Here’s what we understand about the incident. Raindancer was “13 days into a 20-22-day, 3000nm ocean crossing,” Vinny Mattiola wrote on Facebook, when the vessel was struck by a whale, which “damaged the skeg and prop strut, and the boat was completely underwater in <15mins, forcing all four crew to abandon into the life raft.” They were approximately midway between the Galápagos and French Polynesia.

Fortunately the crew were cool-headed and quickly loaded the raft with water, provisions, and emergency communications and survival equipment, and secured Raindancer ‘s dinghy alongside. Mattiola believes the crew’s Iridium GO! device, which they carried along with their SPOT tracker, was instrumental in their rescue.

Within 10 hours of Raindancer going under, her four crew were rescued and taken aboard the sailing vessel Rolling Stones . “A very quick response time,” Tetlow said. “A good achievement.” Tetlow believes Starlink adds “another layer of ability to solve problems quickly,” and that the Starlink communications probably did add to the expedience of the rescue.

According to reports, the boat’s EPIRB hadn’t worked as intended, but the US Coast Guard later confirmed that it had indeed worked, the crew just “didn’t know it.”  When we learned of Raindancer ‘s distress, we contacted Douglas Samp, USCG Search and Rescue Program Manager for the Pacific, and Kevin Cooper, Search and Rescue Program Manager, Hawaii, who were already coordinating rescue with MRCC Peru. Samp later explained, “There is no country in the world that has SAR resources able to respond 2400 miles offshore, so we rely upon other vessels to assist. RCC Alameda assisted MRCC Peru with a satellite broadcast to GMDSS-equipped vessels and diverted an AMVER (Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue) vessel, M/V DONG-A MAIA , to assist, but the Rolling Stones got there first. BZ to your sailing community for rescuing your own.”

Mattiola concluded his post: “All crew are safe and even sent me a voice message thanking everyone involved.”

We hope to share more about this story in the next issue of Latitude 38 .

*Editor’s note: Upon learning the full details of this story, the headline was changed from Sailboat Sinks After Being Rammed By Whale in South Pacific to Sailboat Sinks After Collision with Whale in South Pacific.

29 Comments

Seems the whales are trying to get even.

So glad everybody is safe! Kudos to the rescue team

It would be an interesting study to determine if there’s a correlation between whale strikes and the color of bottom paint.

A bit over the top on the title. “Rammed”? Really. Rammed implies the whale was trying to damage the boat. Do we even know if the boat hit the whale rather than the whale hitting the boat?

Exactly what I was thinking

The boat hit the whale. To say the opposite is just incorrect. Bad reporting.

The whale struck the boat. Scientists believe they associate boats in that area with whaling. Same thing happened around that area about a year ago.

This may have to go to litigation. Some say the whale was double-parked with one taillight out when the Pacific highway was busy with the World ARC Rally, PPJ Rally and other westward-bound cruisers.

It is roughly where the whaling ship Essex, which sailed from Nantucket, was sunk in November of 1820 when it was rammed/attacked by a vengeful sperm whale. The story laid the foundation for Herman Melville’s book ‘Moby Dick.’ The actual story of the sinking of the Essex is told in a great book by Nathaniel Philbrick in his book, “The Heart of the Sea.” Once again the whale didn’t get to tell their side of the story but it certainly might have included the fact that the whaling ship was out there trying to kill it. In 1820 whaling ships were starting to hunt for whales to the west of the Galapagos after major populations of whales in the Atlantic had been depleted. Moby Dick and The Heart of the Sea are both worth a read. Have a look in the Latitude 38 bookstore: https://bookshop.org/shop/latitude38

Hi John, Even if the whale did hit the boat (which is a really hard thing to determine at sea), using the word ‘rammed’ implies intent. And, except for the orca problems off of Gibraltar, and Moby Dick, I don’t think we can attribute intention to the whale. It just sounds sensational.

As for whales associating boats in that area with whaling… that’s a hard one to believe. Many thousands of boats have sailed safely through that area since whaling was banned.

Cheers, Bruce

Oh, and by the way, I thought the movie THE HEART OF THE SEA was excellent. One of the few sailing films that treated the sailing parts realistically. They were never turning the wheel to port and the ship would go starboard!

I was also thinking ? the same thing. Striking a whale that was “perhaps” (I don’t know) resting or sleeping, is completely different than rammed. That infers they were attacked.

As an aside. In their posts the crew have used the terminology that their boat hit the whale. Not that the whale hit them, or attacked them. This is verbiage used by other sailors.

It’s always heartwarming to hear that all survived. And yes, let’s not Moby Dick the whale, before we hear the whole story.

They said the whale hit the”skeg and prop strut” like they didn’t hit the whale, read the !@#$%^& message, I’m curious as to what species it was; the Galapagos islands area has a history of Orcas attacks.

The book “Survive the Savage Sea” by Dougal Robertson comes to mind. Similar situation and location aboard 43ft schooner “Lucette” in the year 1972.

I think it was reported other way round, the boat hit the whale who was sleeping on surface and crew didnt spot him.

Hope the whale is unhurt.

I hope so also??as stated above they maybe trying to get even,if so they got a long way to go

Regarding the incident and life-saving equipment referenced , can anyone remark about range instruments (existing or future planned) that can monitor/detect massive underwater objects (e.g. our beloved whales) ? I’ve crossed the seas, racing and deliveries; and such an event never occurred to me. Thanks

Everyone is so concerned about who hit who but do we know what kind of whale? Is it ok? Was it properly called in to authorities to try and see if it’s a tagged whale they might be able to check up on?

Good point! The collision must have done a number on the whale too.

One crew member saw the whale immediately after the collision, and believed it to be a Bryde’s whale. This would make sense as the species is highly sensitive to disturbances. She reported that the whale appeared to be bleeding. KP44’s are strong hulls and the area around the skeg/rudder post was caved in, which caused the vessel to sink in 15 minutes.

A sad business all the way around .

CLICKBAIT !!! The whale didn’t “ram” the boat… FFS !!

Sounds to me like the whale was surfacing from a dive and hit the propeller, which in turn, caused the damage to the fibergass where the shaft exited the hull. Using the word rammed is for publicity, and distorts the facts.

For those who wish to help the Captain and the crew in these tragic events https://gofund.me/c576a554

No insurance?

Shocking headline to catch readers but untrue. Read the skippers report- the boat collided with the whale which was seen swimming off in a trail of blood.

There is also the Theory that “Herd Bull” whales will protect their group by challenging intruders, just as large mammals on land will do.

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‘Tommy this is not a joke’: Friends send mayday message as boat sinks in Pacific after being hit by whale

Rick rodriguez and crew of three spent 10 hours on a lifeboat and dinghy after collision, article bookmarked.

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A group of friends had to be rescued from the Pacific after their 44ft sailing boat sunk after being struck by a giant whale.

Rick Rodriguez and three friends spent 10 hours on a lifeboat and dinghy after the bizarre reported accident took place on 13 March.

Mr Rodriguez, who is from Florida, was 13 days into a three-week and 3,500-mile crossing of the South Pacific from the Galápagos Islands to French Polynesia when the whale collision took place.

He told The Washington Post that he had been eating vegetarian pizza onboard the boat Raindancer when it ran into the huge whale.

“The second pizza had just come out of the oven, and I was dipping a slice into some ranch dressing,” Mr Rodriguez said in a satellite phone interview with the Post .

“The back half of the boat lifted violently upward and to starboard.”

Crew member Alana Litz added that following the collision she saw “a massive whale off the port aft side with its side fin up in the air.”

And within seconds alarms began sounding warning the group of friends that the boat was taking on water.

Mr Rodriguez says that he issued a mayday call on the boat’s VHF radio and sent out their position in an emergency distress signal. The crew then gathered enough food and water for around a week, as well as emergency equipment before launching the lifeboat and dinghy.

In the rush, they left their passports behind.

Using a phone and satellite hotspot, Mr Rodriquez messaged his friend and sailor Tommy Joyce, who was on the same route but around 180 miles behind them.

“Tommy this is no joke. We hit a whale and the ship went down,” Mr Rodriguez says he messaged his friend.

He also sent a message to his brother Roger urging him to: “Tell mom it’s going to be OK.”

He also asked his sibling to try to contact Mr Joyce on WhatsApp to try to reach him faster.

After turning the wifi hotspot off for two hours to conserve battery life, he finally received a message back from Mr Joyce, saying “We got you bud.”

The crew was eventually rescued hours later.

The Peruvian coast guard had picked up the distress signal and relayed the information to the US Coast Guard station in California.

But, in the end, it was another boat which reached the group first.

The Rolling Stones, captained by sailor Geoff Stone, had heard the mayday call from the Raindancer and coordinated with Mr Joyce and Peruvian officials.

“I feel very lucky, and grateful, that we were rescued so quickly,” added Mr Rodriguez. “We were in the right place at the right time to go down.”

While the crew of the Raindancer should have completed their journey on Wednesday – and had to say goodbye to the Raindancer – the group has no plans of quitting.

Now, they will complete their journey to French Polynesia onboard the Rolling Stones.

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Orcas sank a yacht off Spain — the latest in a slew of such 'attacks' in recent years

Scott Neuman

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast. Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast.

The crew of a sinking yacht was rescued off the coast of Spain this week after a pod of orcas apparently rammed the vessel – the latest "attack" by the marine mammals in the area that has left scientists stumped, several boats at the bottom of the ocean and scores more damaged.

Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast. Scientists don't know why

The encounter on Sunday between an unknown number of orcas, also known as "killer whales," and the 49-foot sailing yacht Alboran Cognac occurred on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow passage linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean where the majority of such incidents have occurred in recent years.

The Alboran Cognac's crew said they felt sudden blows on the hull and that the boat began taking on water. They were rescued by a nearby oil tanker, but the sailboat, left to drift, later went down.

The sinking brings the number of vessels sunk – mostly sailing yachts – to at least five since 2020. Hundreds of less serious encounters resulting in broken rudders and other damage, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR late last year.

As NPR first reported in 2022, many scientists who study orca behavior believe these incidents — in which often one or more of the marine mammals knock off large chunks of a sailboat's rudder — are not meant as attacks, but merely represent playful behavior.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Catamaran Guru(@catamaranguru)

Some marine scientists have characterized these encounters over the years as a "fad," implying that the animals will eventually lose interest and return to more typical behavior.

The study co-authored by López Fernandez, for example, indicated two years ago that orcas were stepping up the frequency of their interactions with sailing vessels in and around the Strait of Gibraltar.

Some researchers think it's merely playful behavior

One hypothesis put forward by Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research, a research group based in Spain, is that orcas like the feel of the water jet produced by a boat's propeller.

A picture taken on May 31, 2023, shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A picture taken on May 31, 2023, shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain.

"What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," de Stephanis told NPR in 2022. "So, when they encounter a sailboat that isn't running its engine, they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder."

In one encounter last year, Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht that his vessel, Champagne, was approached by "two smaller and one larger orca" off Gibraltar.

"The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side," he said.

The Spanish coast guard rescued Schaufelberger and his crew, towing Champagne to the Spanish port of Barbate, but the vessel sank before reaching safety.

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31, 2023. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31, 2023.

The encounters could be a response to past trauma

López Fernandez believes that a female known as White Gladis, who leads the group of around 40 animals, may have had a traumatizing encounter with a boat or a fishing net. In an act of revenge, she is teaching her pod-mates how to carry out attacks with her encouragement, he believes.

"The orcas are doing this on purpose, of course, we don't know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day," López Fernandez told Live Science .

It's an intriguing possibility, Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute , told NPR last year.

"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," she said. "I don't think we can completely rule it out."

However, Shields said she remained skeptical of the "revenge" hypothesis. She said that despite humans having "given a lot of opportunities for orcas to respond to us in an aggressive manner," there are no other examples of them doing so.

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at Wild Orca, a conservation group based in Washington state, was also cautious about the hypothesis when NPR spoke to her last year. She pointed out that killer whale populations in waters off Washington "were highly targeted" in the past as a source for aquariums. She said seal bombs – small charges that fishers throw into the water in an effort to scare sea lions away from their nets – were dropped in their path while helicopters and boats herded them into coves.

"The pod never attacked boats after that," she said.

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Their Boat Hit a Whale and Sank. The Internet Saved Their Lives.

After the collision in the Pacific Ocean this month, Rick Rodriguez and three other sailors were rescued by a fellow boater, with an assist from a satellite internet signal.

By Mike Ives

When Rick Rodriguez’s sailboat collided with a whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean earlier this month, it sank within about 15 minutes. But not before he and his three fellow mariners had escaped with essential supplies and cutting-edge communications gear.

One was a pocket-size satellite device that allowed Mr. Rodriguez to call his brother, who was thousands of miles away on land, from a life raft. That call would set in motion a successful rescue effort by other sailors in the area who had satellite internet access on their boats.

“Technology saved our lives,” Mr. Rodriguez later wrote in an account that he typed on his iPhone from the sailboat that had rescued him and his crew.

People involved in the roughly nine-hour rescue say it illustrates how newer satellite technologies, especially Starlink internet systems , operated by the rocket company SpaceX since 2019 , have dramatically improved emergency communication options for sailors stranded at sea — and the people trying to find them.

“All sailors want to help out,” said Tommy Joyce, a friend of Mr. Rodriguez who helped organize the rescue effort from his own sailboat. “But this just makes it so much easier to coordinate and help boaters in distress.”

Starlink’s service gives vessels access to satellite signals that reach oceans and seas around the globe, according to the company. The fee-based connection allows sailors to reach other vessels on their own, instead of relying solely on sending distress signals to government-rescue agencies that use older, satellite-based communication technologies.

But the rapid rescue would not have been possible without the battery-powered satellite device that Mr. Rodriguez used to call his brother. Such devices have only been used by recreational sailors for about a decade, according to the United States Coast Guard. This one’s manufacturer, Iridium, said in a statement that the device is “incredibly popular with the sailing community.”

“The recent adoption of more capable satellite systems now means sailors can broadcast distress to a closed or public chat group, sometimes online, and get an instant response,” said Paul Tetlow, the managing director of the World Cruising Club, a sailing organization whose members participated in the rescue .

A sinking feeling

Whales don’t normally hit boats. In a famous exception, one rammed the whaling vessel Essex as it crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean in 1820, an accident that was among the inspirations for Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “ Moby Dick .”

In Mr. Rodriguez’s case, a whale interrupted a three-week voyage by his 44-foot sailboat, Raindancer , from the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador to French Polynesia. At the time of the impact on March 13, the boat was cruising at about seven miles per hour and its crew was busy eating homemade pizza.

Mr. Rodriguez would later write that making contact with the whale — just as he dipped a slice into ranch dressing — felt like hitting a concrete wall.

Even as the boat sank, “I felt like it was just a scene out of a movie," Alana Litz, a friend of Mr. Rodriguez and one of the sailors on Raindancer, told NBC’s “Today” program last week. The story of the rescue had been reported earlier by The Washington Post .

Raindancer’s hull was reinforced to withstand an impact with something as large and heavy as a cargo container. But the collision created multiple cracks near the stern, Mr. Rodriguez later wrote , and water rose to the floorboards within about 30 seconds.

Minutes later, he and his friends had all escaped from the boat with food, water and other essential supplies. When he looked back, he saw the last 10 feet of the mast sinking quickly. As a line that had been tying the raft to the boat started to come under tension, he cut it with a knife.

That left the Raindancer crew floating in the open ocean, about 2,400 miles west of Lima, Peru, and 1,800 miles southeast of Tahiti.

“The sun began to set and soon it was pitch dark,” Mr. Rodriguez, who was not available for an interview, wrote in an account of the journey that he shared with other sailors. “And we were floating right smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a dinghy and a life raft. Hopeful that we would be rescued soon.”

‘Not a drill’

Before Raindancer sank, Mr. Rodriguez activated a satellite radio beacon that instantly sent a distress alert to coast guard authorities in Peru, the country with search and rescue authority over that part of the Pacific, and the United States, where his boat was registered.

In 2009, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued a sailboat crew whose vessel had collided with a whale and sank about 70 miles off the coast of Mexico. But Raindancer’s remote location made a rescue like that one impossible. So in the hour after it sank, U.S. Coast Guard officials used decades-old satellite communications technology to contact commercial vessels near the site of the accident.

One vessel responded to say that it was about 10 hours away and willing to divert. But, in the end, that was not necessary because Mr. Rodriguez’s satellite phone call to his brother Roger had already set a separate, successful rescue effort in motion.

Mr. Rodriguez’s brother contacted Mr. Joyce, whose own boat, Southern Cross, had left the Galápagos around the same time and was about 200 miles behind Raindancer when it sank. Because Southern Cross had a Starlink internet connection, it became a hub for a rescue effort that Mr. Joyce, 40, coordinated with other boats using WhatsApp, Facebook and several smartphone apps that track wind speed, tides and boat positions.

“Not a drill,” Mr. Joyce, who works in the biotech industry, often from his boat, wrote on WhatsApp to other sailors who were in the area. “We are in the Pacific headed that direction but there are closer vessels.”

After a flurry of communication, several boats began sailing as quickly as possible toward Raindancer’s last known coordinates.

SpaceX did not respond to an inquiry about the system’s coverage in the Pacific. But Douglas Samp, who oversees the Coast Guard’s search and rescue operations in the Pacific, said in a phone interview that vessels only began using Starlink internet service in the open ocean this year.

Mr. Joyce said that satellite internet had been key to finding boats that were close to the stranded crew.

“They were all using Starlink,” he said, speaking in a video interview from his boat as it sailed to Tahiti. “Can you imagine if we didn’t have access?”

Of course, there was one sailboat captain without a Starlink signal during the rescue: Mr. Rodriguez. After night fell over the Pacific, he and his fellow sailors resorted to the ancient method of sitting in a life raft and hoping for the best.

In the darkness, the wind picked up and flying fish jumped into their dinghy, according to Mr. Rodriguez’s account. Every hour or so, they placed a mayday call on a hand-held radio, hoping that a ship might happen to pass within its range.

None did. But after a few more hours of anxious waiting, they saw the lights of a catamaran and heard the voice of its American captain crackling over their radio. That is when they screamed in relief.

Mike Ives is a general assignment reporter. More about Mike Ives

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