A pod of sperm whales struck a 52-foot yacht in the South Pacific until it sank, leaving four crew stranded nearly 18 hours before rescue.
Four sailors on the yacht Tai Tam abandoned ship after a run-in with sperm whales left the vessel taking on water and unable to steer, The Sun reported.
The crew declared a mayday at 1 p.m. local time, fought to keep the boat afloat, then cut free in a lifeboat as the 52-foot craft went under in a remote stretch of the South Pacific. A container ship pulled them aboard at 6 a.m. Sunday, about 18 hours after the whales first hit the hull.
They escaped safely and were later taken to New Caledonia to recover.
Crew member Jemma Cooper described the moment the animals made contact.
"The whole boat was pushed sideways."
She said the sailors then realized what they were dealing with.
"There were six to eight, a pod of whales there. So then it became clear that that’s what it was."
Her husband, Jeremy, was below deck when the impact came. He later described the damage on the starboard side.
"All the steering gear was smashed on the starboard side, and there was a significant amount of water coming in."
The reported scene matched hard physical failure, not a glancing bump. Several gashes opened in the hull. Fiberglass cracked. Steering broke. Water poured in faster than the crew could manage.
Terry Hetherington and Martin Jaffre, the other two aboard, scooped water and tried to patch the breaches. The effort failed.
With the Tai Tam going down, all four jumped into the lifeboat and cut the tether. They feared the sinking wreck would drag them under with it. Drone footage later showed the yacht disappearing beneath the surface.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft went out to locate the shipwrecked crew and keep contact while help moved in.
The pickup itself came from the MV Sofrana Surville, a 470-foot container ship. At 6 a.m. Sunday, the freighter reached the four sailors. Within half an hour they were hauled up and given coffee.
From there they headed to New Caledonia to recover. No further injuries beyond that safe recovery were reported in the account.
Jeremy summed up the voyage in blunt terms after it ended.
"It was wonderful, wonderful, and just a terrible, terrible ending."
The Sun’s account framed the encounter as whales “targeting” or “attacking” the yacht. What the crew described was direct contact: a pod of roughly six to eight sperm whales pushing the boat, smashing steering gear, and opening the hull until the Tai Tam could not be saved.
No formal motive for the whales appears in the reporting. No full calendar date, exact coordinates, or flag-state detail for the yacht was included either, only the remote South Pacific location, the local-time mayday, the Sunday morning rescue, and the roughly 18-hour wait in the lifeboat.
What is plain is the sequence. A pleasure cruise met large wild animals in open ocean. The hull failed. Damage control failed. The crew did the hard, correct thing, abandon early, cut free, and stay alive until a warplane and a working freighter could finish the job.
The ocean still create the rules. Romance does not patch a cracked hull, and neither does wishful thinking about wildlife.
