Orca encounter left our yacht rudderless

Zoe Barlow shares her experience of losing a rudder when targeted by orcas while on passage from Spain to Morocco

- Zoe Barlow

Fitfully sleeping in the forward cabin as we headed down the Spanish coast, a loud bang had me scrabbling to the cockpit, "Is it them?" I asked my husband, Martyn, who was on watch. I was answered by another bang. Orcas were attacking our rudder and the wheel was spinning madly. It was pitch black and we couldn't see anything but occasionally could hear a blow and a swish. It was terrifying.

We'd been aware of orca attacks happening all the way down the Portuguese Atlantic coast as we headed down last September. The orca reporting group on Facebook was full of encounters from Porto to Cascais to Sines... many reports of broken rudders and boats needing to be towed in. We'd felt lucky to have avoided them so far and although there had been a few instances. this year, when we set off from Spain to Morocco at the end of April we weren't overly concerned. This time, however, we were not so fortunate.

What to do?

We'd heard that by going astern you might deter the orcas as they're not able to reach the rudder as easily. We did this and were making circles in the same spot our AIS track must have looked crazy. It seemed to work but as soon as we tried to go forwards they started again. I decided to call for help on Ch16. Our position at this point was about nine miles off Barbate in Spain. I couldn't get a response from the Spanish, Gibraltar or Moroccan coastguard despite calling several times. As we weren't in immediate danger I didn't want to issue a mayday, but I did at least want someone to know what was happening to us.

I managed to find a telephone number and luckily my phone had some signal. A Spanish voice responded and I felt giddy with relief. He took details and said he would get someone to call us back. Meanwhile, we were going astern slowly not knowing what to do for the best.