Orca Alley

For some unknown reason, Orcas (killer whales) have been interacting with sailboats in the last 3 years from the coast of France down through Portugal and Spain, and across to Morocco. They approach the boats and do anything from circling, to bumping the hull, to forcefully moving the rudder, to altogether breaking off the rudder (and at least two sailboats have been sunk – crew rescued though). It’s not entirely known why, though researchers think they are ’playing’ with the boats or potentially teaching the young how to fish for tuna (the rudder of a modern sailboat could potentially resemble the tail of a tuna and orcas bite the tail to prevent the fish from getting away).

Unfortunately we’re sailing directly through waters where boats have had interactions with serious damage done every day. Fortunately for us we have a boat bottom that is older and does not look like modern boats (particularly the rudder which is keel-hung rather than being separate), which may make us less of a target. Nonetheless, we had our orca tool kit ready. I had a rubber mallet to bang the hull (noise to make them leave), dish soap to pour in the water (might interfere with their echo location and again make them leave), and diver recall firecrackers as a last resort (bang in the water to make them leave). I’m happy to report the passage was uneventful, and I have way too much dish soap onboard now 😁.

The bigger issue for us was dodging big boat traffic entering and exiting the Med. I felt like we were playing the 80’s video game Frogger, dodging and weaving in between the big guys! And once it was over, Tangiers!

Update: the orca attacks continue daily. As we came into Tangier we heard a radio call from another sailboat reporting an ongoing attack. Just one day later, a boat was hit so hard it sank and the crew had to be rescued. What a frustrating situation…..