It was no ordinary race through the Straight of Gibraltar for Team JAJO, a Dutch racing team in the 2023 Ocean Race. Instead, Iberian Orcas took issue with the racing yacht’s presence on their turf and attacked it for fifteen minutes while Team JAJO attempted to sail away from the attacking orcas.
Team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek described the “scary moment” in a video on The Ocean Race website, saying that the orcas first circled the racing vessel before bumping into and biting the ship’s rudders while ramming the hull. The crew members tried to scare the whales off by banging on the hull.
In the video, Captain van Beek described the incident, noting that the pod of orcas was beautiful to look at but that it was scary to be attacked by the whales because of the dangers posed by the large and carnivorous creatures.
“Twenty minutes ago, we got hit by some orcas. Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team,” the captain said.
Describing how the team got the orcas to go away, Captain van Beek added, “We took down the sails and slowed down the boat as quickly as possible, and luckily after a few attacks, they went away.”
Team JAJO’s onboard reporter Brend Schuil commented on the attack as well. he noted that the team knew the orcas might attack and had prepared for such a scenario, saying, “We knew that there was a possibility of an orca attack this leg. So we had already spoken about what to do if the situation would occur.”
Watch the video of the Orca attack here, where you can see the orcas going after the rudder and bumping the hull:
In the caption to the video posted on Instagram, The Ocean Race said, “On their approach to Gibraltar this afternoon, @teamjajo encountered a pod of orcas which led to a scary moment on board the VO65! Thankfully, the crew and the boat are unharmed. The Dutch boat skippered by Jelmer van Beek is now back on its way to Genova.” Commenting on the video, Captain van Beek said, “Happy to be racing again! But this was a scary moment at sea…”
Commenters on that video noted that it seemed more like the orcas were playing with the boat and crew rather than actually attacking the video, but being on a boat orcas were banging on would be scary regardless of their intentions.
Team JAJO was in second place when attacked by the orca pod. It lost ground to other boats when slowing down to deal with the orca situation and fell to fourth place, but was able to regain second place by the end of the day. The race lasts for weeks and involves circumnavigating the globe.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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