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SVN Solovelanet Global
I
t almost looks like something out of a novel,
and yet it is a true story. Off the northwest
coast of Spain, the Iberian government was
forced to forbid boats of less than 15 me
-
tres in length from sail-ing beyond 60 miles.
The reason? In that area, some orcas have re-
peatedly bumped into sailing boats, fortunately
without serious damage.It is likely to be a pack
made up mostly of young and a bit too impe-
tuous individuals, to put it mildly. The curiosity
of orcas towards sailboats is nothing new and
the history of Italian sailing records a disastrous
episode, the sinking of Giorgio Falk's Guia III.
In the 1970s, a regatta named the Atlantic Trian
-
gle was held. It was a race in stages, in crew,
which started from Saint Malò in France and
made stops in Cape Town in South Africa and
Rio in Brazil, before heading back to England
with the final leg in Portsmouth. During the last
stage, while she was crossing the Atlantic Oce
-
an, the boat armed by Giorgio Falk, who was
not on board at that time, sank. It was not a
structural problem: it was an orca that sunk her.
by Jean Bonnet
