A young couple on their 30ft yacht Orca have a dramatic meeting with a pod of humpback whales on the West Australian coastJohn and Kara Pennington\u2019s adventures aboard Orca eventually took them north to AlaskaIt\u2019s far too easy for a retired ocean sailor like me who served his time 40 years ago in a freer, simpler world, to imagine that the age of high adventure, near-zero funding and minimalist boats has gone with the wind. It has not. Humanity doesn\u2019t change a jot, and the good ship Orca and her bold crew are here to spell it out for us.
\nJohn A. Pennington is a 22-year-old surfer from California who decides life has more to offer than the beach and another wipe-out, so he goes for a sail instead. He and his girlfriend Kara ship out in a 30ft boat and simply disappear into the Pacific with no particular voyage plan. One improbable scenario leads to another until they find themselves in Western Australia.
\nMorale has taken a serious thrashing in the Australian Bight, and reading of Kara\u2019s reactions to the idea of further passagemaking whisks me back many decades to my own similar response following a beating-up in the North Atlantic. It\u2019s all so real. The characters they meet are larger than life, the incidents on passage are outrageous and there are laughs even when all seems lost.
\nJohn\u2019s book entitled simply Orca is a total blast from beginning to end. The paperback is cheaper than a glass of champagne in a London bar, and it\u2019s even freely available on the internet. Here they are, in a remote Australian outport, watching their fate slowly reveal itself in the form of straight, downtown, feminine logic.
\nFrom Orca by John A Pennington
\nAfter a week in the village I could walk down the single street and greet everyone by name. After a month, I\u2019d inquire after their grandmothers\u2019 bunions and send my regards to their second cousins, and each day slid by in a fascinating malaise of comfortable companionship, sunny weather, fun surf and new friends.
\nThat all ended when Kara\u2019s little brother, Nathaniel, said he wanted a taste of the sailing life. The fates certainly provided it. Perhaps we all got a little more than we bargained for.
\nThe night his plane landed, an extremely violent cold front swept through Western Australia \u2013 meteorologists called it a once-in-a-decade storm. Power was knocked out in much of Perth, lightning flickered across the southern sky, and 17 boats were lost in the vulnerable Fremantle mooring fields.
\nWhite-out conditions prevailed in my little haven, with gusts to 70 knots. Orca was ready for storm conditions with double mooring lines and extra chafe gear, but other boats weren\u2019t so lucky.
\nArticle continues below\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tHow likely is a collision with whales at sea? And how can you reduce the chances?<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOur first encounter with whales at sea came while crossing Stellwagen Bank, a vast marine sanctuary off Cape Cod when\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tWhale encounter \u2013 there seems to be an increasing number of collisions with whales as yachts get faster<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0 The first I heard about a sailing boat colliding with a whale mid-ocean was when the 49ft sloop Peningo\u2026<\/p>\n
At 3am an unmanned sloop went flying by, pushed by the sustained pressure of 50 knots. With a dinghy rescue rendered impossible by the 4ft whitecaps rolling through the harbour, I threw on my wetsuit and dove overboard, striking out to save the boat before she crashed into the breakwater. Scrambling aboard, I searched frantically for an anchor, the engine start switch, or any other way to avert disaster\u2014but there was nothing.
\nI braced for the shipwreck and a resounding boom set the mast vibrating and triggered an avalanche of gear down below. The cabin lights flickered, electrics knocked loose by the impact. I leaped overboard and scrambled up the breakwater to where the rest of the village had gathered. With the boat pinned to the rocks by wind and waves there was little to be done.
\nAs a testament to the strength and durability of fibreglass, the boat hammered against the rocks for hours before being towed off after the storm \u2013 still afloat. This gave me some much-needed confidence for what happened to Orca the next week.
\nEvening watch as the sun goes down
\nI felt recovered and ready to proceed, aside from a pronounced limp. I\u2019d walked across town in search of an oil-pressure sensor for Orca\u2019s engine soon after arrival. My withered walking appendages had not been pleased, and a tendon on my starboard side had rebelled by seizing and swelling; it refused to heal. Otherwise, I was ready to continue the voyage.
\nKara had recovered \u2013 but only physically. After her collapse in the Bass Straight and subsequent battering in the Bight, she was struggling with a crisis of confidence. Weather discussions gave her an unpalatable mixture of symptoms \u2013 sweaty palms, uncontrollable shallow breathing, heart palpitations, and general attacks of anxiety.
\nHer nightmares were of waves, storms, and sinking; she\u2019d often wake screaming and in tears. Panic struck at odd times, even under fine weather in port, unexpectedly reducing her to trembling silence and tearful stillness. Looking back, I now realise that I was dangerously, horribly close to losing my first mate.
\nAfter the storm front, I stubbornly loaded Kara and Nathaniel aboard and set out for Shark Bay, 250 miles up the coast. The storm\u2019s leftover slop and onshore conditions made for fast but miserable sailing. Nathaniel was confined to his bunk, groggy and nauseous. At night, the cloud cover and new moon plunged us into complete darkness, the horizonless night causing even me to feel the early symptoms of seasickness.
\nThe shallow offshore reefs along this coastline bend the seas in strange ways, and occasionally the refracted swells combine beyond an unpredictable and uncomfortable motion into breaking crests \u2013 one of which ploughed into us amidships and sent several gallons of seawater cascading below. Nathaniel groaned and buried his head in the now-wet pillow.
\nKara slogged down the companionway from the filled cockpit and I took the watch. I was huddling in the dubious protection of the dodger, aflood of icy rain running down my sleeve, when there was an awful crash. The bow lurched upward as Orca ran up onto something. The rigging shook, the mast flexing and oscillating with the shock. There was a second thud under the keel and the stern flew above the bow. Then, we crashed back onto an even keel in a crater of spray. The whole incident was over in an instant.
\nOrca at anchor in the south-west of Tasmania
\nI leaped to my feet, eyes on our wake but there was nothing in the darkness. Kara wrenched open the bilge covers and reported no water. I grabbed the wheel to feel for feedback from the rudder \u2013 hopefully we still had one. I spun the wheel, concentrating, when a deafening blast and a jet of water erupted alongside Orca.
\nI felt a huge, violent, and terrifying presence in the blackness: a whale, close enough to touch. We were sailing among a pod of them, invisible in the murk. They couldn\u2019t hear Orca, sailing silent in the blackest of moonless nights. We\u2019d collided.
\nNathaniel groaned, still uncomprehendingly and uncaringly seasick, and rolled over in his wet bunk. Kara, shaking with panic-tinged adrenaline, snapped through the charts looking for the closest port. A freighter terminal was close; we diverted. Under the cover of darkness, Orca found anchorage in a rolly corner behind the dubious protection of a submerged and derelict breakwater.
\nLandfall in the South Pacific
\nThe following morning I dove under the boat to inspect the hull. Despite a distinct whale-textured impression in the antifoul paint near the bow, everything seemed fine. The propeller and rudder were present and accounted for, and our fibreglass looked solid and unfractured.
\nSince Orca\u2019s keel was already battered from the reef in New Caledonia, I mentally led the whole thing away as a great experience for Nathaniel, who let out a snore. Kara, however, understood exactly how fortunate we\u2019d been. \u201cI don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t think I can do it. I can\u2019t go back to sea.\u201d
\nShe needed encouragement; I provided. \u201cYou can do it, we can do it. Look, the weather forecast is still good,\u201d I said. A tear tracked down her cheek. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d she sobbed.
\n\u201cSorry? Why should you be sorry?\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m weak. I\u2019m letting you down, I know. I\u2019m letting Orca down, but I\u2019m just so nervous. Something bad always happens at sea.\u201d
\nI sighed. This was typical. I\u2019d kidnapped Kara from a happy life in California and ordered her to sail into a series of storms in the Southern Ocean, and she thinks all this is her fault. I tried a new tack.
\nAnchored up in a South Pacific atoll
\n\u201cYou call last night something bad? This is great! We just crashed into a freaking humpback whale and survived without a scratch! Imagine the free drinks at the next pub!\u201d Her mouth quirked, but the tears still ran.
\nShe sniffed. \u201cWell, I guess you\u2019re kind of right, which is pretty unusual. We did get swatted by a whale. What could be worse than that?\u201d She giggled.
\nWe went back to sea. Kara\u2019s confidence began to recover during two gorgeous days of sailing. The humpbacks followed us up the coast, spouting and breaching and sounding. The sunsets flashed green, skies were clear, and the first sliver of moon shone brightly \u2013 the whales kept their distance. Nathaniel gained his sea legs and stood several night watches, freeing me to catch up on some sleep.
\nJohn and Kara exploring ashore
\nInside massive Shark Bay, the water was clear, the sailing smooth, and the weather settled. While sea life was plentiful, the land was eerily barren. Other than stunted brush, skeletons, shipwrecks and ruin, only vultures circled above the endless sand dunes. Reef sharks prowled the shallows. Nathaniel was game to spearfish among the sharks, but the 8ft sea snake that snuck up behind him was more than he could handle; I\u2019d rarely seen anyone swim quite that fast.
\nWe ate lobster, fish, and giant clams cooked on an open beach fire. Nathaniel speared squid in the shallows, butchered a tuna, and battled a sizeable black-tip reef shark before tackling it into the cockpit. After, he even used his teeth to pull the cork on a bottle of rum; he was turning into a great sailor.
\nTime rushed by once we were safe in the Bay, and soon it was time to find a bus stop to send our guest home. At the north end of Shark Bay, another mangrove-fringed mudhole oozes stench adjacent to the town of Carnarvon.
\nWe bounced our way over the bar and got ready to say goodbye to Nathaniel. He was not looking forward to an 18-hour bus ride to the airport and then a 20-hour flight. Kara packed him snacks and sent him off. The boat suddenly seemed very quiet. Kara and I looked at each other.
\nWhat now? We were anchored at the westernmost harbour in Australia.
\n\u201cKara, we\u2019ve got three choices. The new one-year plan is to sail north to Southeast Asia. Visit Indonesia, Thailand, maybe South Korea and Japan. Then we can use the high-latitude westerlies to cross the North Pacific back to the States.\u201d Kara shivered and frowned.
\n\u201cSecond, we can keep sailing west, in the trade winds, out into the Indian Ocean. This is a two or three year plan. There are serious pirate concerns along this route, as well as a lot of offshore sailing.
\n\u201cThird, we could sail the boat up to Darwin and sell her.\u201d
\n\u201cSell Orca?\u201d Kara was shocked I\u2019d even mention it. \u201cI won\u2019t consider it. Not after all she\u2019s done for us, not unless we have to. How are the finances?\u201d
\nFinances were very good. Aside from buying fresh vegetables, cans, rice, and noodles in strategically inexpensive countries, we\u2019d been hunter-gathering and living rent-free at anchor for two years now. We hadn\u2019t even dented the $20,000 we started with. I calculated that for every day I\u2019d worked back home, I could afford the sailing lifestyle for 20. We could go on practically forever.
\nKara considered. \u201cSo, really it\u2019s a choice between two years in the trades or a one-year dash into the stormy North Pacific. Seems obvious to me. After what we just went through down south, I want to stick to the trades.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat about the Somalian pirates?\u201d
\n\u201cPirates? I\u2019m more scared of weather. Let\u2019s go west.\u201d Thinking back, I realised we were about to experience something truly magical.
\nThe tradewinds are a band of tropical easterlies that encircle the globe, and if we continued to sail west \u2013 downwind and downcurrent \u2013 we would eventually arrive upwind and upcurrent of where we started. Few acts of laziness are as richly rewarded as sailing around the world.
\nFirst published in the September 2018 issue of Yachting World. Orca by John A Pennington is published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. RRP: \u00a36.99 in paperback via Amazon, currently free to read on KindleUnlimited.
\nThe post Sailing with humpback whales: An amazing extract from Orca by John A Pennington appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A young couple on their 30ft yacht Orca have a dramatic meeting with a pod of humpback whales on the West Australian coastJohn and Kara Pennington\u2019s adventures aboard Orca eventually took them north to AlaskaIt\u2019s far too easy for a … <\/p>\n