On July 25, my friend Bob Osborn, with whom I made the fall passage from Hampton, Virgina to Antigua aboard his Aerodyne 47 Pandora in a Salty Dawg Caribbean Rally, had the misfortune to become the latest victim of an orca attack in the Straits of Gibraltar.
Bob, pictured above, served as the third president of the Salty Dawg Sailing Association and among his many accomplishments he was the driving force behind the SDSA’s newest event, the spring Rally to the Azores. The new rally staged in Bermuda last May and got underway on June 1. The 12 boats in the fleet all safely made landfall in Horta at the rally’s conclusions.
Bob and his crew then set off for Gibraltar and the south of Spain where he planned to leave his boat for the winter. But the pod of orcas had another plan for him. Bob is a prolific blogger and recounted the event on his blog-site at www.sailpandora.com.
He wrote:
“As we approached the Straits of Gibraltar we were moving along nicely with a powerful inbound current, making better than 10kts over the bottom. All of a sudden, the wheel started spinning violently.
“We had no idea what was happening and looking around, saw nothing. But, moments later we spied a huge orca under the stern and realized that he/she wasn’t alone. A pod of perhaps 4-5 of these huge animals had targeted Pandora.
“Steve had the presence of mind to get out his camera and take a video. As they say “if an orca attacks a boat and there isn’t anyone to video tape it, did the attack happen? Well, we did record it and it did happen.
“It was terrifying, and I had fears of the rudder post snapping or the bottom of the boat cracking open as has had on a number of other boats. Pandora’s rudder post is large, made of carbon fiber and it held up well. However, about half of the rudder was ripped off, left hanging by a slab of fiberglass fabric.
“It wasn’t until we tied up in the marina and took a look under the boat that we realized the extent of the damage. The next morning I purchased an aggressive hand saw, put on a wetsuit, hooked up my hookah air compressor and spent an hour under the boat sawing through the remainder of the broken rudder.”
Bob was able to motor Pandora to a marina in Gibraltar where he cleared away broken bits at the bottom of the rudder and the Hydrovane’s rudder. Luckily, Pandora’s hull, rudder post and steering system were undamaged.
Following the stop and hull inspection in Gibraltar, Bob and his crew made a safe passage to the southern Spanish port in Almerimar where Pandora was hauled. The boat yard there will build a new rudder for Pandora over the winter.
Since 2020, there have been hundreds of Orca attacks around the Iberian peninsula, mostly on slower moving, mid-sized sailboats. The orcas involved seem to be juveniles and they appear to be teaching younger whales how to damage the rudders and thus disable the boats. At least six boats have been sunk.
Bob will be back home in Essex, Connecticut later this summer and has promised to write up the full story for Cruising Compass.
Check out the dramatic video reel taken by one of Pandora’s crew. Copy and paste the url into the search bar.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Rxh_pDQn384
