Orca Interaction

It is quite surreal how in just a couple of hours you can go from pure joy, to pure fear back to pure joy. As you know we were quite nervous before our Bay of Biscay crossing departure. One of the main reason for these nerves was the alarming news of orca encounters and even attacks near the coast of Brest. The area that we wouldn't directly cross, but we would be nearby.

We started our crossing still a bit nervous but as the hours passed and the wind started to pick up a bit more, favorable, we continuously started to feel better. It got even better a couple hours after dinner when 10 to 15 dolphins started to play around our Nimrod. We talked about how beautiful these moments are to experience with the two of us, on our home, in the middle of the ocean. It still feels quite unbelievable.

Once the dolphins moved on Bart went to bed a bit early to try to recover some more from our stressful last couple of days. This left me alone on deck. It was a beautiful evening and I was enjoying my book and sailing. Until, I heard on our VHF that a sailing yacht had been attacked by killer whales, orca's, and that they had become rudderless due to the attack, around 10 pm. A rescue plane was en route to save the crew. Unfortunately I was unable to hear the location of the attack. But since we were still able to receive the information on our VHF, it couldn't have been that far away. I started to think whether I should tell Bart since he was still feeling quite nervous about our trip before this news. Quickly I made the decision to tell him. I reasoned, when and not if, the orca's would come near us we would both be more ready once we both knew they were likely to be close.

Around midnight when Bart had woken up for his watch, I told him the news. "Shit". But nothing we can do about it now. I went to bed, but couldn't sleep. My entire body and mind were too active, too attentive, listening to every sound, waiting. Outside Bart was experiencing the same. It was so dark, so all he could do was listen, sail on and wait. Then, around 2:15 am, I heard Bart's call: "Isabel orca's". Within 2 minutes I had put on my clothes, sailing gear and rescue vest and stood on deck. Bart told me there were 3, 4 or 5 orca's surrounding us. They were closing us in, 2 orca's on each side of the boat. Possibly trying to stop or push us around just for fun. We decided to be as uninteresting as possible: no sails, no rudder movement and no talking, maybe some whispering. We were both shaking, but weirdly calm, probably adrenaline focus. We've both never been so afraid. At one moment it looked like they had left, but they came back. They repeated their ritual: diving, circling, waiting. In the end, after about 20 minutes, they left southwards. We felt so lucky. They didn't damage our Nimrod.

We decided to sail east, to the coast. The idea of sailing for at least 2 more days and 2 more days, as stressed as we were since we might encounter them again, that just wouldn't be healthy. It took us about 18 hrs to sail to Pornichet. Unable to sleep, we both stayed awake the first couple of hours. Once the sun had taken over from the dark night, we both were able to sleep a bit.

We feel so lucky that Nimrod came out unharmed. We are physically fine, but mentally we need some time to recover. Our sail to Pornichet already helped to enjoy sailing again. We have decided though, to continue sailing near the coast and hop around a bit more. Lots of beautiful places to sail and visit around here. Maybe we will be even better at enjoying every little moment of journey now, who knows.Read more