Having lived aboard and sailed an
Allied Seawind for 7 years myself, I've always been fascinated by Allan Eddy's
circumnavigation. This was the first solo
circumnavigation ever completed in a
fiberglass boat, a 30'
allied seawind built in 1962. From
The Circumnavigators - by Don Holm - Chapter 32
OPOGEE SAILED ALONG BY HERSELF SMARTLY UNDER THE
twin jibs as usual. Alan Eddy had gone below to get a dish towel
to finish drying the dishes which he was doing up in the
cockpit.
Suddenly the boat jolted violently. He stumbled and fell against the
bunk.
Opogee shuddered and trembled from
keel to masthead. Had
they struck a reef? Or a floating derelict? Here, in the middle of the
Indian Ocean, seven hundred miles from land?
He rushed up on
deck in time to see a dark shape rolling astern in
the wake. A whale! While he watched, the beast turned over, rolling
in an unusual way, as if hurt. Apparently
Opogee had run up on the
sleeping cetacean. Then there came another shuddering blow, rever-
berating like a drum against the
fiberglass hull. Then another and
another. A whole
school of whales!
Stiff with fear, Eddy tried desperately to think of an escape. He
had no gun and only a small
fish spear which would only antagonize
them. He thought of throwing over dish water,
oil, detergent. Futile.
Then, from another direction, he saw steaming toward him an-
other
school of a dozen or more whales, until the ocean around
Opogee was filled with fins and blunt noses. He could have reached
~ 285 ~
over and touched the nearest ones. Once more there came a shudder-
ing blow against the hull. He hoped the then relatively untried fiber-
glass skin would withstand the beating. But if several of the whales
decided to attack at once, nothing could stand up to it.
The tension went on for twenty minutes or more, the whales
swimming alongside, seeming to watch him with their pig-like eyes,
at times striking the hull. Slightly smaller than
Opogee, they were
identified as false killer whales or pilot whales.
When the whales had broken off the contact and gone, Eddy went
below with much relief to assess the damage and was further relieved
to find no structural defects.