Tania Lewis, a wildlife biologist who had been working in Glacier Bay National Park for decades, was travelling on the 25-foot-long ‘Windrush’ with her husband Eric and their 23-year-old daughter Lu. On 29 July 2026, the family dropped anchor in a bay near Gloomy Knob, as reported by the broadcaster KTOO reported. They had previously spotted a humpback whale feeding nearby, which left the bay after a while.
At around 11.30 pm, whilst the parents were already asleep and Lu was still reading in the bow, a massive blow struck the boat. Water poured in immediately and in great quantities. According to the family, they acted quickly: Eric checked the bilge pump, whilst Tania packed sleeping bags and the radio into a rucksack. They reportedly had no time to put on life jackets. As they tried to escape into the dinghy, which was moored alongside, they realised that one of the two mooring lines had come loose; the dinghy had capsized. Eric righted it, and the other two climbed in. Meanwhile, the yacht was sinking and threatened to drag the dinghy down with it. Water was already pouring in. At the last moment, Eric managed to cut the remaining mooring line. According to Tania and Lu’s estimate, it took only about three minutes from the moment the yacht was struck until it sank completely.
The two women began bailing out the water, whilst Eric tried to pull the boat ashore whilst swimming. However, the dinghy was still full of water and capsized again when Eric tried to climb into it. When the shipwrecked couple righted the boat once more, there was apparently so little water left in it that they were able to row ashore. Meanwhile, their daughter Lu had swum ashore.
A night by the campfire, then the captain of a cruise ship arrived
All three reached the shore around midnight, soaked and shivering in their thin nightclothes. Using an emergency kit they’d brought with them – containing a lighter, a survival blanket and a paperback – they lit a campfire on the beach using driftwood and huddled together under the survival blanket to keep warm.
Several attempts to send a Mayday signal via the handheld radio initially went unanswered; it was only when Tania got back into the dinghy and rowed out of the bay that she gained a signal via a repeater and managed to contact the national park’s emergency centre. As all three had now warmed up, she declined a helicopter rescue.
At around 3 o’clock, the cruise ship “National Geographic Quest” approached, and its captain offered assistance. However, as the sunken mast posed an obstacle to the large ship in the shallow bay, the family decided against a rescue and instead had their position relayed to the rangers via the cruise ship’s satellite phone. At 6.30 am, the Park Service picked up the family.
When the wreck was recovered the following weekend, a huge hole was found in the starboard side of the hull – large enough to crawl through – along with shreds of black, leathery skin. Tania Lewis’s colleagues confirmed, based on samples, that it was humpback whale skin. In their assessment, the collision is likely to have been relatively minor for the whale itself.
Why the echo sounder would have prevented the collision
Looking back, Tania Lewis identifies one specific mistake: she should have left the echo sounder switched on overnight. Whilst whales cannot hear the actual sonar frequency of an echo sounder, they can hear its harmonics within the audible range. However, many cruising sailors switch off their echo sounder at night to save power, particularly when the boat is securely at anchor anyway. The case of the ‘Windrush’ therefore provides an unusually clear reason to reconsider this habit, particularly in known whale-habitation areas.
According to the family, it was also customary, when whales were sighted nearby whilst the engine was not running, to tap on the hull to alert the animals to the boat’s presence. The night before, this method had worked when two humpback whales swam past close to the boat. On the night of the accident itself, however, there was no warning whatsoever – no spout, no visible sign – before the impact occurred.
This is not an isolated case, as figures from Alaska show
According to scientific data, the fact that it is, of all things, moored or drifting boats that are struck is no coincidence. A Study on 108 reported whale-boat collisions in Alaska between 1978 and 2011 shows that, in 15 cases, humpback whales collided with boats at anchor or adrift, presumably because the animals had not detected them acoustically. Humpback whales were involved in 86 per cent of the cases analysed, with small boats under 15 metres in length being the most frequently affected.
Unlike the orca incidents that have been reported time and again over the past few years – which are more often interpreted as deliberate attacks on the rudder and keel – the Alaska incident is regarded as a classic case of mistaken identity: to a whale, a quiet sailing boat is acoustically almost indistinguishable from the sound of ordinary waves. Studies also show that this is the case with fast offshore racing yachts, that collisions occur even at low speeds, partly because sleeping animals find it difficult to distinguish the background noise of a boat from other ocean sounds.
Tania Lewis said that, with hindsight, the family regretted never having discussed in detail beforehand what to do in an emergency. Her conclusion: the emergency kit they had brought with them – containing a thermal blanket, a lighter and a walkie-talkie – ultimately made all the difference during their night on the beach.
What do you do with the depth sounder at night whilst at anchor: switch it off to save battery power?
Lars Bolle
Chief Editor Digital