Sébastien Destremau may have taken part twice in the Vendée Globes, but he still happens to have new experiences on the water. This week, the crew of the boat Lancelot, led by the Breton, was sailing off Cape Trafalgar, in southern Spain, when it was visited by at least eight killer whales, explains Voiles et voiles. For more than an hour, the members of the crew suffered the battering of the animals. "It was very impressive and we were very scared", admits Sébastien Destremau.
The skipper then brings the boat to a stop and lowers the sails, as required by procedure. "I'm not at all convinced that stopping the ship is the right strategy, but, not speaking the language of the orcs, it's difficult for me to be sure. More seriously, it's terrifying to feel a fifteen ton boat being shaken like a nutshell. We weren't far on board. »
Before possibly heading back to sea to reach Brittany, the skipper stopped in Cadiz to carry out some checks. Only the rudder suffered from the attack. The boat did not fill with water, allowing Sébastien Destremau to reach the coast without assistance.
Skipper Sébastien Destremau's sailboat damaged by killer whales off the Spanish coast pic.twitter.com/3FAVfXSh6G
"I never imagined I would be the victim of an attack," he confesses. He immediately corrects himself: "Besides, attack is probably not a good choice of word, because there was no aggression towards the humans that we are, only towards the boat. It will sound crazy but, somewhere, we have the feeling that they were trying to tell us something. »
