Jemma Cooper said a sperm whale struck the 52-foot Tai Tam with a loud thud, pushing the boat sideways and leaving four sailors fighting to keep it afloat after the collision that led to sailors rescued after whale collision. The yacht later sank in the South Pacific after the crew gave up on steering and abandoned it.
Cooper said, “There was sort of a loud thud. The whole boat was pushed sideways,” and then the crew saw “six to eight” whales off the port side. The Tai Tam was 250 nautical miles north of Norfolk Island when the impact cracked its hull.
Jemma Cooper and Jeremy Cooper
Jeremy Cooper said the blow woke him below deck. “It was pretty immediately evident it was very serious,” he said. “All the steering gear was smashed on the starboard side, and there was a significant amount of water coming in.” Martin Jaffre said the collision left several gashes in the hull, cracked the fiberglass structure and broke the steering.
The crew activated an emergency beacon at 1 p.m. New Zealand time on Saturday, about 30 minutes after the whale collision, and then spent the next few hours bailing out water. Terry Hetherington said, “We declared a full mayday.” The Royal New Zealand Air Force sent a P-8A Poseidon patrol plane to establish radio communications and coordinate the rescue.
South Pacific rescue
Late at night, the four sailors left the yacht and moved into a life raft in calm seas under a full moon. The crew cut the tether in the early hours of Sunday morning, and the Tai Tam slipped beneath the waves soon after. The rescue ended with all four alive, but the boat was gone.
The sequence matters for anyone tracking the incident: the danger did not stop at the strike. The crew survived the collision, then had to choose between a damaged yacht with no steering and a raft in remote water. What exactly caused the initial collision between the yacht and the sperm whale pod remains the unanswered point in the account.
