The first morning after arriving in A Coruña we were starved since we didn’t have any dinner after arriving very late last night. After quickly moving our boat to a more quiet pontoon (we were moored on the arrivals pontoon where there was a lot of swell during the night) we stumbled into the first coffee shop we got across. I think the incredibly friendly owner knew how desperately we needed some food and we got a rather simple breakfast of toast and croissants, but it has never tasted so good. After walking through the lovely old town which is mostly car-free, we found Jenny’s paradise. An all gluten-free bakery! They make the best gluten-free bread and the most amazing gluten-free pain au chocolat, so good that she had one every morning while we were staying there. Later that day we cleaned the boat, relaxed some more and prepared for our first crew member who would be arriving the next day, Andrin’s sister. We spent a couple of lovely days in A Coruña with its many nice bars and restaurants. We went for a run and a bicycle ride along its promenade, one of the longest in Europe with 9 km. Most of the town is car-free, every road has a very wide bicycle lane which we used on our rental bikes and we had breakfast in one of its many parks every morning. We visited the Tower of Hercules, the oldest known lighthouse on earth, being built in the first century AD.
Our initial plan was to leave A Coruña and the Spanish coast with its feared and famous orcas behind and sail directly to Madeira. This would have taken us approximately 4-5 days. But the wind prognosis was not good, mostly southerly and very light. Thus, we decided not to do the passage, but slowly start working our way south.
Fish helping us clean our boat 🙂
We left A Coruña for Muxia, a small village with a big marina. While rounding the North-West corner of Spain we had a short moment of panic. We saw from afar a huge flock of birds feeding on a shoal of fish like we saw many times before. But there was something else having its lunch too, something very big and black at least 8 meters long and we immediately thought orcas. We grabbed our camera (also because scientists studying their behaviour want to identify them), picked up some speed and made a big detour around the feeding frenzy. But after sending our photos to the research group, they concluded that it most likely was a minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) but told us that orcas had been sighted close by during the last days. So we decided to stay even closer to the coast which meant we could only do day trips due to the many fishing buoys which you will certainly get tangled up in at night. From Muxia we continued just south of Fisterra where we anchored in an open but very nice bay on a beach. We were the only ship in sight, which is something that surprised me, as I usually only know anchorages in the Mediterranean which are overflowing with boats and everybody has to fight for a place. It’s not uncommon that somebody lays his anchor on top of yours leading to a big web of anchor chains. The weather was nice that day, sunny and warm, and it was the first time we really felt like we were on holiday. Until now we were always shivering and wet in our foul weather gear sailing through the rain. Flurina brought a Ukulele with her and we were able to practice some chords, it was a fun evening!
The next day we realized that if we continued with that speed, we would never reach the south of Portugal in time. This meant we had to increase the distance we needed to sail every day, and planned around 60-80 miles a day. At 6 knots of speed, this equals 10-12 hours each day (and you can usually add 2 hours for mooring and other unexpected delays). This meant sailing from sunrise to sunset each day, which barely left us any time to visit the many nice places on our route.
The next town after Muxia was Vigo, a bigger city in which we hoped to stock up a bit as we were running low on food. Sailing in Galicia was very exciting with its beautiful rocky coastline, its many lighthouses perched high on cliffs and its abundant wildlife. There were so many dolphins it was just unbelievable. On the day we were sailing to Vigo, we were visited on average every two hours by dolphins, and that is no exaggeration. And then suddenly we were visited by something else.
We knew that the Iberian orca, a local subpopulation listed as critically endangered and just 39 individuals recorded in 2011, were a really big problem on the coast we were sailing. Orcas are fascinating animals. They are very intelligent and have intriguing hunting techniques. A couple of years ago, seeing an orca was every sailor’s highlight. But lately (after the pandemic), they developed a quite concerning habit. For still unclear reasons (many theories but none conclusive), orcas have started attacking sailboat rudders (or interacting with them, as marine biologists prefer to say) which has been reported 500 times since 2020. Researchers suspect that a female orca called White Gladis may have experienced a traumatic event like a collision with a boat or entrapment during illegal fishing activities which has triggered a change in her behaviour as a defense mechanism. As orcas are very social creatures that behavior is spreading very fast also among younger individuals. Another theory is that juveniles are interacting with rudders to show their strength until they break it.
It is clear that the orcas know very well what a rudder is, and what its function for a sailboat is. They deliberately ram into the rudder until it snaps. After that, they lose interest and leave, leaving the sailboats non-manoeuvrable and requiring a tow into the harbour where expensive and complicated repairs await them. In the worst case, ships can sink because the orcas also damage the hulls, which has happened three times so far (one of them was a Swiss boat).
Most of these interactions between orcas and sailboats happen around the Strait of Gibraltar. The orcas accumulate there because all the tuna entering or leaving the Mediterranean have to pass through that narrow gap, and similarly the sailboats accumulate there because it’s the only way for them into the Mediterranean as well. This of course leads to a very high probability of an interaction.
We knew that the orcas would migrate north during September and October but hoped, that they would all be already be further north as lately there have been no interactions nearby. We checked our orca apps from time to time, but in A Coruña and Muxia, there were no sightings near us. Thus, we were not that afraid of seeing any. We also knew of the strategy that some sailors use, they try to sail along the 20 m depth line and in case they see orcas go as close to the shore as possible because orcas apparently don’t like to follow to these shallow waters. But the coastline of Galicia is very jagged and rocky, so sailing along the 20 m line was not really an option for us.
Flurina and I were sitting at the helm and talking, Jenny was taking a nap. We saw two dolphins approaching from the left, and I simply said to her “Look, another two dolphins”. Since we already saw so many dolphins that day, we weren’t really paying much attention to them anymore. But then suddenly we felt a hard knock on the rudder. I saw the steering wheel smash to one side. It took me around two seconds to realize what was happening and I shouted “Orcas!”. How could that be happening to us? I immediately disengaged the autopilot to release pressure off the rudder in case the orcas struck again and stopped the motor. This was what I remembered from the current recommendations. The rudder was hit again, this time instantly turning the wheel from one side to the other. And then again. I looked into the water and only saw a black shadow next to our rudder. There definitely was something down there, but I didn’t see anything clearly. I told everyone to go inside and wait, in the hope that the orcas lose interest faster. After the third hit on the rudder, we heard and saw nothing more.
After a while, we felt safe to start the motor again and go closer to the shore as quickly as possible. I decided to make a VHF Securité call, to inform other sailors of the presence of orcas. This was the first time I had to announce anything of importance over VHF and I set up a DSC call and began quite anxiously saying on channel 16 “Securité, Securité, Securité. This is sailing yacht Tremoggia… We have been attacked by orcas”. Luckily I got my radio license only a couple of months ago, so I remembered all the procedures. The Coast Guard was not really interested in my call and there was no reply, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that they didn’t speak any English, so I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with them anyway. Our rudder seemed to be working fine so we decided to continue to Vigo, which was still a couple hours away but the closest harbour. If anything was broken, Vigo would have been the best place to haul the boat out of the water and repair the rudder. We are still not sure if the dolphins we saw were actually orcas, or if there were orcas and dolphins at the same time.
Two hours later on our way to Vigo, we saw a big motorboat coming our way. It was the Spanish Customs, which decided it was necessary to do a routine custom control of our boat which can be quite intimidating. As if our day wasn’t exciting enough already! In around 1 m of swell, they moored next to us. Two officers tried to board our boat but it was quite tricky due to the waves. After a while, they managed to jump over and begin with their routine inspection.
They didn’t really speak English, which made communicating which documents they wanted to see quite difficult. They filled out an identical sheet of paper as the custom control in France, except that it was in another colour. It all seemed a little pointless after the day we had. One of the officers who stayed on their motorboat saw the name of our boat and remembered that he had heard it before and started shouting something about orcas in Spanish. We told them about the interaction and they wanted to know the coordinates where it happened and started scanning the horizon with their binoculars. Finally, they had to jump back onto their boat and left. Although the communication was really difficult and we did not need a routine control after what just happened, they were very nice and friendly.
After that, we made it safely to Vigo without any further interruptions and moored in a marina in a very industrial port. The nice marinero who spoke much better English than the customs officers welcomed us and gave us a key. Since it was already dark, we just checked if there was any water leaking into our hulls and whether our ropes connecting the rudder with the steering wheel were still in one piece and went to bed.
The next day I dove down to the rudder to check for any damage. As we were not able to see the rudder from above, we were not even sure if it was still there. I checked all the sides and edges and found no damage. The only thing concerning us was that it was wiggling a bit. We phoned up Carl the previous owner and he said some wiggling is normal. We should make sure, that when the rudder is wiggling, the rudder quadrant is wiggling as well. The rudder quadrant is the part on top of the rudder, where you connect the steering cables from the rudder to the wheel. Since I was already out of the water and showered, Flurina volunteered to go into the water and I went into the boat to check the quadrant inside. I took some videos while Flurina was wiggling the rudder and sent them to Carl. Quite relieved he told us that this seems to be normal and there is nothing to worry about. Lucky us! Interestingly he also told us, that we are not the first Neel that has been attacked by orcas. Neel started to produce spare rudders such that they could be delivered quickly in case of damage due to the many orca interactions.
