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A 40-ton whale smashed into a yacht as it breached off the coast of South Africa near Robben Island.
Paloma Werner told Sky News that as she was sailing with her boyfriend, the whale unexpectedly sprung out of the water and smashed into the mast, breaking it in half on Tuesday.
Werner and her boyfriend Ralph Mothes owns the company Cape Town Sailing Academy and posted pictures of the incident on their Facebook page.
"While taking some pictures we decided to had back when a southern right whale, between 11 -- 14 m long, breach about 100 meters away from us and then suddenly breach about 10 meters from us and then on us,” they wrote on their page. “We where sailing had no engine of so we could not even take any action. Scary!”
The whale is reportedly a Southern Right Whale and was several meters longer than their yacht.
The couple said that they were watching the whale and it swam several hundred meters closer to their yacht, disappearing underneath the water before coming up and smashing into the vessel. Werner, 50, assumed that the young whale would simply go underneath their boat.
“Apparently he did not see us as the visibility is poor and we were sailing so had not the motor on. He was just having fun,” the couple wrote on their page. “The folly of youth!”
Pictures show that the reportedly 33-foot long sea mammal took down the mast but did not capsize the vessel.
“How we did not get hurt is a miracle,” they wrote.
The whale left behind “bits of skin and blubber” but the two believe that the mammal was not seriously injured in the accident as it left no blood behind, they told Sky News.
