'It Looked Like Moby Dick' : 3 Tell How Whale Struck, Sank Yacht

By JOHN M. GLIONNA

Sept. 12, 1989 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO — Moments before the great beast struck, Mark Felix could see a stupendous spout rising above the waves, a 50-foot geyser on the open sea.

It was, the 20-year sailing veteran and former whale-watching guide recalled, the largest whale of any kind he had seen in his life.

And it was about to ram a hole in the 57-foot yacht with Felix at the helm.

“It looked more like a tornado than a water spout,” he said. “It was at least 50 feet high, which means the whale was probably twice that big. It was a whale of a whale. It looked like Moby Dick to me.”

The huge finback whale suddenly rammed the wooden Chriscraft yacht, The Lady Ruth, punching a jagged crack in its bow.

“The impact was like hitting an immense rock with some rubber coating around it,” recalled Charles Gray, 30, one of the crewmen. “It stopped the boat dead in its tracks. It even lifted it out of the water.”

Within 45 minutes, the crew had abandoned the sinking vessel and piled into a rubber life raft for what was to be a harrowing afternoon adrift at sea.

After seven hours scanning the horizon for ships and yelling at the whales who had stuck around, the crew was rescued by an 80-foot Coast Guard cutter on patrol.

A Distraction at First

On Monday, all three were back home in San Diego, trying to explain what experts have termed as one of the rarest incidents to occur at sea--an unprovoked attack by whales.

Felix, 39, was one of three crewmen hired to deliver the 25-year-old yacht from San Diego to Discovery Bay in the Sacramento River Delta when the three came upon a pod of finback whales Saturday, heading in the same direction 40 miles off the coast of Monterey. Over several hours they saw 25 to 30 finback whales, which can grow to 70 feet long and weigh more than 50 tons.

At first the whales, traveling in family groups of three or four, were little more than a distraction. Until the attack, the whales came no closer than half a mile. When fellow crewman Charles Gray handed over the yacht’s controls to Felix about noon, he even joked about the presence of the big sea mammals.

“Hey Mark, don’t hit any whales now,” he joked.

Ten minutes later, one of the whales hit them.

William Reich, the acting skipper of the boat, said that, a moment before the whale hit, Felix had commented that he saw a whale’s footprint, the image left behind on the surface after the mammal sounds, or dives.

“And then ‘Boom!’ It sounded like a cannon went off,” said the 44-year-old Reich, a Coast Guard-licensed merchant marine master. “The whale came up right into the bottom of the boat. He knocked Mark right out of his chair.”

Felix said that “just before the whale hit, I saw the huge spout and another smaller spout. It could have been a mother who rammed us because we got too close to her calf.”

Gray echoed the theory. “They had followed us for quite some time. It’s kind of boring out there, so they probably had this mild curiosity. But, never in a million years, would I have thought they would ram us.”

Felix added: “I’ve been so close to whales before you could smell their breath. And they have hellacious breath. I mean, whales can pick you up with their sonar miles away. They’ll spook in a second if you get too close. A whale doesn’t make contact with you at sea by accident.”

Two whale experts Monday offered varying explanations for the attack.

Second Largest of Whales

“It’s very rare,” said Dr. Graham Worthy, a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “But whales have been known to attack before.”

Before federal laws prohibited onlookers from getting so close, gray whales had been known to ram or topple small boats that wandered too near in Scammon’s Lagoon in Baja California, he said.

“Their mating instincts are pretty strong,” Worthy said. “If anything came between a mother and her calf, she’d feel threatened and she’d probably attack.

“But this sinking sounds to me a more severe result than expected. It could have been a lucky hit by the whale.”

Dr. Tom Dohl, another research biologist at the UC Santa Cruz, said finback whales can weigh more than 50 tons and are the second-largest whale.

Despite its weight and size, he rejected the idea that a whale would launch an unprovoked attack on a boat. “I even reject the phrase ‘whale attack,’ ” he said.

“The probability is that this guy drove his boat into the whale, not vice versa,” he said. Dan Byrne of the Cousteau Society in Los Angeles said the boat’s wooden construction may have sent confusing signals to the whale, provoking the attack.

He noted at least four whale attacks that have taken place within a 500-mile radius of the Galapagos Islands in the South Pacific within the past 20 years, including an incident last month in which a Florida couple remained adrift for 88 days after being attacked by a pod of whales.

Wooden Hulls the Key?

Each of the incidents had one thing in common, he said. The downed boats were all made of wood, rather than fiberglass or some other seaworthy material.

“It may be that they produced an echo to the whale’s sonar that sent back a threatening signal,” Byrne said.

Whatever the case, the crewmen of the Lady Ruth feel lucky to have survived.

“See these, they’re ‘We’re-just-happy-to-be-alive-brewskis,’ ” said Felix as he and Gray sat on the back porch of his Linda Vista home about noon Monday, drinking beer. “We don’t normally drink this early in the day.”

Both Gray and Felix, a seasoned sailor who had delivered several boats up and down the West Coast, were hired by Reich, who had contracted with the boat’s owner to deliver the aging yacht.

The three left Harbor Island about 6 p.m. Thursday.

They spotted the whales Saturday morning and were at first intrigued by their presence. After rounding Point Conception in the morning in high seas, they thought the worst of the trip was over.

Then disaster struck.

While Reich radioed for help, both Felix and Gray went below deck, throwing possessions out of the way in order to reach the battered bow.

For 45 minutes, they used a pocket knife to cut shards of a blanket to plug the leak, praying aloud that someone would hear their radio call. The crack in the hull was wide enough to put a fist through.

Meanwhile, 10-foot waves were throwing them about the cabin, knocking the radio out for several minutes at a time.

“We couldn’t believe it was happening,” Gray said. “It was like a nightmare.” Finally Reich, the Lady Ruth’s acting skipper, gave the order to abandon ship. Reich couldn’t be reached Monday afternoon.

‘Alone Out There’

The three inflated the six-man emergency raft, grabbing several flares, a pair of binoculars, a sextant and several other belongings. As they bobbed in their raft under a darkening afternoon sky, the men watched the Lady Ruth go under.

“It was weird to see the ship go down,” Gray said. “All of a sudden we were alone out there. And it’s a mighty big ocean.”

At first, they were too angry to panic, yelling obscenities at the whales who had apparently stuck around to the watch the action. “We yelled things you can’t print,” Gray said, “stuff like, ‘Nuke the whales!’ and all that.

“We thought they had come back to finish us off.”

After two passing ships failed to notice their flares, the crew became more worried. Although they had provisions for two weeks, they dreaded the cold night ahead.

And, although they were in sight of land, they knew that the rough waves could bash their raft on the rocky coast if they got too close.

Finally, after seven hours in the white-crested waves, the three were picked up by a Coast Guard cutter, the Point Winslow, on routine coastal patrol from Morro Bay.

“All of a sudden, there they were,” Gray said. “When they pulled us on board, the waves were so high that, one minute the raft was level with the deck, and the next you couldn’t reach the bottom rung of the ladder.”

Gray, a plumber by trade, said the trip was his first boat delivery job. And probably his last.

“I’m afraid to even go near the bathtub right now,” he said. “I was in a Hobie Cat accident on Mission Bay the other day in which my friend was seriously hurt. This is my second scrape in a week.

“Right now, I just want to stay as far away from the water as I can.”

Reich, who has been in the seafaring business for 22 years, was treated Monday for several scrapes suffered in the mishap. In 10 days, he said, he’ll be part of a crew taking an 85-foot schooner to Hawaii.

“Hey, this is what I do,” he said. “I’ve been riding these horses over 20 years. I gotta go. My motto is, ‘Sail ‘em till they drop.’ ”