17/06/2025 14:15 Sighting

We were crossing Sagres bay in about 20m, when David Royall and Charles saw a large fin and remarked that it was a bit big for a dolphin. Then David felt the wheel jerked from his hands [luckily it wasn't on autohelm, as we were in fog]. He described it later as: "It was like someone below was violently moving the rudder from side to side." Then we spotted a small pod of orca breaching on our port side. David estimated about 3-4 of them. Not as big as adults, but definitely delinquent juveniles. We appeared to have got away lightly, as they went off elsewhere.
We seemed ok; the rudder and wheel worked normally, but we will have to check it of course. We continued through the fog at top speed heading for the 17m contour, as advised by the Portuguese authorities. We had the emergency rudder stock ready to bang with a hammer but didn't need it. Running shore wards seems a sound tactic. Throughout this, we were in company with another yacht, Nalu so we kept each other in sight as we followed the shallow contour into Lagos.
Sadly, we heard later that in total 5 boats had contact with this group of orca last evening, all in approximately the same position as us: 37D00.0N 8D 54.9W at 1415A. Two of them were on the rally with us: a Nautitech 44 catamaran called Fairview, which lost a rudder and a Hansa 38 monohull called More Shenanigans, which lost half its rudder. They anchored in Sagres bay to inspect the damage and spent the night there and they are on their way into Lagos now. The other boats were another catamaran called Kotare and an Oyster 55 called Med Mermaid. Both had rudder damage.