The odyssey against the orcas of the sailboat that resists in the Copa del Rey

“Having gotten this far is already for us like winning at least half a regatta”. Álvaro González Camacho checks his 37-foot sailboat from the jetty of the Club Náutico de Palma, where sweltering heat sets the morning on fire. As he speaks, he points to the counterboom, a piece that helps adjust the sails.. Although not visible to the naked eye, it is still damaged after the incident. The incident: the encounter that his boat had with four orcas while the crew was moving the sailboat by sea to Mallorca from its base in Puerto Sherry, Cádiz.

“It was already getting dark, it was around 9:30 p.m.; the wind was blowing strongly, at around 28 knots and there were a lot of waves, it was a difficult afternoon at sea,” he explains after posing in front of the Kapote III, the sailboat that the orcas attacked when he was sailing three miles from the Malaga coast of Estepona. Suddenly, the crew felt a dull thud at the stern, an impact coming like a bubble from the depths of the Mediterranean.. The sailboat accused the blow, pitched on its course and was left with little steering. Not adrift, but with serious difficulty to remain stable on its journey.

Its crew, most of them in their twenties, did not know what had happened. Until they saw them emerging a few meters away: a group of four orcas was stealthily moving away from the boat after having struck. Only then were they aware that their hull had suffered the mysterious phenomenon that has been frightening sailors in the Strait for years and plunging the scientific community into confusion.. Killer whale attacks and their fixation with disabling the rudder of medium-sized sailboats. In this case, there was something new, since the attack had taken place in the Mediterranean, an area usually unexplored by cetaceans.

The rudder of the sailboat broken by orcas WORLD

The sailors of the Kapote III kept calm. They called Maritime Rescue and the ship was able to reach port with its sailors safe. But the damage was visible: two thirds of the rudder had been rendered useless, with the fiber torn and bulging, split in two due to the violent blow from one of the animals.. There were 10 days to go before the start of the Copa del Rey Mapfre de Vela, the competition for which the Kapote III had been preparing for months and for which it was heading across the Strait.

The Majorcan regatta has been one of the great illusions of Álvaro and his cousin, Ignacio Camacho, both owners of the boat, who had registered for the first time in the competition throughout the year. “We didn't expect that to happen to us after having already crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, but we weren't going to give up, we weren't going to give up, the Copa del Rey was our adventure,” he now explains with the satisfaction of having saved the odyssey and having managed to arrive in time to haggle in Palma.

Friends and 'amateurs'

These two cousins from Cádiz, along with Álvaro's other brother, Javier, have been sailing all their lives, although they are not professionals.. They are a crew of friends, amateurs who confirm the hybrid nature that characterizes the regatta that is held at the Real Club Náutico de Palma, where every August for the last 41 years the sailing elite has met.

Álvaro works in the architecture sector, as a project manager, and sailing is a vocation for him, an escape valve and an adventure with which he meets against all odds. Or, as on this occasion, against orca and tide. “Despite what happened to us, at no time did we doubt that we would try to do everything possible to get there, whatever the cost, we did not throw in the towel,” he adds.

Upon returning to the port of Cádiz after the incident, the outlook was not rosy.. On weekends the shipyards in the area close, the clock was ticking. The owners of the Kapote III turned to naval engineer Pablo Torres, a friend, a great expert in working with fiber. The Fundación Vela Clásica de España, based in Puerto de Santa María, lent its facilities to carry out the repair work. On Sunday they painted the new repaired rudder and got back on course, being able to arrive in Palma just in time for regulated training.

Finally, last Monday, July 31, they cast off to compete in the ORC 3 category, where the boat was in fourteenth position the day before yesterday, in the lower middle part of the table, made up of 21 boats.. On Wednesday morning, when speaking to EL MUNDO, the crew members rigged the boat to face the coastal regatta, a novelty in this year's competition. “With finishing and not breaking the boat anymore we would be satisfied, this is a giant competition”, explains Álvaro, the skipper.

The odyssey of Kapote III has not been an exception. Another two of the 100 sailboats taking part in the famous Majorcan regatta, the Corsario and the Tiro, have suffered attacks by orcas (or interactions, as the scientific community prefers to call them, which does not have a clear explanation of the causes) while they were heading to the island from its Atlantic home ports. Two of the damaged boats are Andalusian and one Portuguese. All of them have been able to repair on time, and participate with similar results, for the moment honorable, in the middle or lower part of the classification, none outstanding, but none as a red lantern either.

The Copa del Rey brings together more than 1,300 sailors of 16 different nationalities these days. King Felipe VI has reached the middle of the regatta in third position aboard his Aifos 500 in his category, ORC1. The test ends this Saturday.