Huge fright for Sébastien Destremau and his crew. The former Vendée Globe sailor (18th and last ranked in the 2016-2017 edition, abandoned during the following edition), came under attack from at least eight killer whales for nearly an hour, this Monday between 5:35 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at Cap de Trafalgar. “An hour under their battering, it was very impressive and we were very scared,” said the shocked Mediterranean aboard his boat Lancelot. “We saw them coming from quite a distance and we immediately understood that this time it was for us,” he commented.
Respecting the recommended procedure in the event of an attack (GTOA Protocol), the skipper immediately brought the boat to a stop by lowering the sails. “After this experience, I am not at all convinced that stopping the ship is the right strategy but not speaking the language of orcas, it is difficult for me to be affirmative. More seriously, it’s terrifying to feel a fifteen-ton boat being shaken like a nutshell,” he said. “We weren’t leading off on board”.
The MRCC Tarifa was warned by VHF on channel 72 and remained on stand-by while keeping the emergency services ready to intervene if the situation deteriorated. “There are no injuries on board, I just twisted my thumb with the helm when an orca kicked the rudder, a large piece of which came off. The boat does not fill with water and we are not asking for assistance at the moment,” the skipper told the Tarifa emergency services by radio.
The boat will now stop in Cadiz in the south of Spain to carry out checks before continuing, or not, its route towards Brittany. “During the Vendée Globe, I was accompanied by killer whales in the South Seas, but I would never have imagined being the victim of an attack. Besides, attack is probably not a good choice of word, because there was no aggressiveness towards the human that we are but only towards the boat. It’s going to sound crazy but, somewhere, we have the feeling that they were trying to tell us something,” he concluded.
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