Four sailors spend 18 hours in a raft after a sperm whale sinks the Tai Tam

Four sailors spent about 18 hours in a life raft after a sperm whale cracked the hull of their yacht in the South Pacific, north of Norfolk Island. The container ship MV Sofrana Surville took them aboard at 6 a.m. on 27 September. They told AFP on 1 October how the boat was lost.

The yacht was the Tai Tam, 16 metres, about 52 feet, on a Pacific holiday passage. The strike came in open water about 250 nautical miles north of Norfolk Island, which itself sits between New Zealand and New Caledonia. Australian sailor Jemma Cooper was at the wheel. She described a loud thud, the whole boat shoved sideways, and herself thrown off the helm. The blow broke the steering. New Zealand crew member Terry Hetherington said a boat with no steering quickly becomes a problem. The crew declared a mayday and set off the emergency beacon at 1 p.m.

They were in a pod of sperm whales, not a single animal passing at distance. A sperm whale is large enough to stove a 16-metre hull if it surfaces under the quarter or hits the rudder. The Tai Tam lost the rudder's use in that hit. Without steerage, the pumps and the buckets were a holding action. Water kept coming. Late on Saturday night, with the sea calm and a full moon on the deck, the four moved into the life raft. In the early hours of Sunday they cut the tether. They were afraid the sinking yacht would drag the raft under. The Tai Tam went down soon after.

The rescue chain had started at the beacon. A Royal New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon flew to the position, made radio contact, and helped coordinate. The ship that arrived was the MV Sofrana Surville, 143 metres, about 470 feet. It reached the raft at 6 a.m. on Sunday, about 18 hours after the whale strike. Jeremy Cooper, also on the crew, said the approach of a ship that size toward a raft was its own scare. The New Zealand military confirmed the pickup time.

Sperm whale strikes on yachts are rare and well documented when they happen, because the animal is identifiable and the damage is specific. The Tai Tam case has a clean timeline that most of those accounts lack. Beacon at 1 p.m. Saturday. Abandonment late Saturday. Tether cut in the early hours. Ship alongside at 6 a.m. Sunday. The 18-hour figure is the gap from the thud to the rail of the Sofrana Surville, not from the mayday to the first aircraft. The Poseidon was overhead before the ship. It cannot lift four people out of a raft in mid-ocean. The ship can.

Norfolk Island is the nearest named land, and 250 nautical miles north of it is empty water. A holiday crew with a working beacon and a calm night had a chance. The same hull damage in a blow, or with a beacon that failed, would have been a different story. The crew's own account, given to AFP four days after the pickup, is that the steering went in the first impact and that the boat was finished once they cut the line.

The Tai Tam is on the bottom. The four sailors are not. The fact pattern that made the difference is narrow: an EPIRB fired at 1 p.m., a Poseidon that found the raft, and a 143-metre container ship that was close enough to arrive before the water and the night did the rest.