It was one whale of a tale… literally.
A couple enjoying a beautiful day of sailing had a terrifying run in with a massive mammal that left their craft seriously damaged, and the whale likely not feeling too good, either.
“We’d spotted it about 100 meters away and thought that was the end of it,” said Paloma Werner, who was on the boat with her boyfriend and business partner, Ralph Mothes. “Then suddenly it was right up beside us.”
The couple, experienced sailors who operate the Cape Town Sailing Academy together, had noticed the whale as they cruised through Table Bay, near Cape Town harbor, when it approached their vessel.
“I assumed it would go underneath the boat, but instead it sprang out of the sea,” the 50-year-old said. “We were very lucky to get through it, as the sheer weight of the thing was huge.”
The Southern right whale, an endangered species common to those waters which can weight up to 60 tons, then shot up and smashed into the Intrepid, a 32-foot yacht with a steel hull.
Mothes, 59, who was piloting the boat, ducked behind the wheel as the whale thrashed around the deck and destroyed their mast, before finally slipping back into the water.
“Miraculously nothing happened to us,” Werner told CNN.
The moment was photographed by a tourist from Botswana, who was aboard a nearby boat. The couple used their boat’s engine to pilot the broken vessel back to shore.
Despite being frightened for their lives, and their boat, the couple aren’t holding a grudge against the beast from below the sea.
“He was just having fun,” Wener said. “They have very poor eyesight and obviously if they’re breaching visibility is very poor. The whale did not intend to attack us.”