Conference unifix::sailing

    The best method for scaring off whales from my experience is to
    pull out a camera.  The seem to disappear almost immediately.  This
    method seems to work equally well for seals and dolphins.

    
    	Actually, I tried the camera trick, it didn't work. :)
    

    
    
    	Besides Moby Dick, I've have never heard or read of a whale doing
    	damage to a boat in the New England area, has anyone else? 
      
    	Besides whales, how do you scare off sharks. 
      

    
       	You don't have to worry about sharks if you're in the boat.

       	If you're in the water, shouting into the water is suppose to
    	scare them.   They typically will nudge their prey before
  	attacking, to test the prey.  At this time you should strike
   	the shark.  Gouging the eyes is good too.

	I don't have any empirical data on this! :)
            

    re: .4
    
    
    How about biting the shark or pulling its hair or kicking it in
    the you know what?  Or shine a flashlight in it's eyes and shout,
    FREEZE!                    
                                            
    re: .0                                  
                                            
    As for the whale, try dumping your portapotty.  Someone from New
    Jersey told me that one.  Apparently, it's common practice down
    there to do that to your neighbors.  :-)
                                                                     

    re: .1
    
    Good reply from a MARKETING/SAILOR!!
    

    You could try speaking to the whale in Japanese or Russian, and
    invite it to dinner  ;^)
    
    Or you could don a fake wooden leg and and scream "thar she blows"
    
    or may be display a Nuke the Whales bumper sticker.
    
    or turn on the stereo and play soothing tunes from Twisted Sister.
    
    or turn on the TV and tune to CBN.
    
    On the serious side, how about turning on the motor ?
    
    /jim

    Why scare it at all???  I mean, people pay good money for a show
    you got for free.  Sure, that air they blow through their top stinks
    to high heaven, but I've never heard of whales brushing against
    boats.  Once one surfaced less than 50 feet from the Hobie Cat I
    was sailing off of Halibut Point, and I just kept telling myself
    that they are rumored to be gentle creatures.  Sure, I was scared
    sh_, uh, witless, at the time.  But there were no inadvertant waves
    of the tail or anything.  Just a couple of quick glimpses of a back
    that was clearly bigger than the boat, and then it was gone.  And
    if you sail off of P'town you'll see plenty of them, and mobody
    I know ever had any problems getting bumped.  I think they're just
    curious, and probably not curious enough to risk hurting themselves
    against your "hard" boat hull.  So I'd recommend that you just relax
    and take lots of pictures.
    
    ... Bob

    I agree with -.1, why frighten away such a wonderful creature. but
    if you really get worried, Greenpeace (the ecology group) have an
    ingenious way of preventing Japanese and Russian whalers catching
    their prey - they play distress calls through transducers fitted
    to the hull of their ship. Makes the whales dive for cover in deep
    water!
    
    Sharks - that's another story.  You *can* frighten away grey reef
    sharks (the most dangerous type for divers apart from Tiger sharks)
    by hauling a bag of rotten grey reef shark meat behind you. They'll
    still be as curious to start with but after first looks they disappear
    like billy-oh! (Tested in OZ off the barrier reef I believe).      
    In Scotland, we have basking sharks up to 35/40 feet long, not
    dangerous in themselves (plankton eaters) but they have a nasty
    habit of wanting to scratch the barnacles off their backs using
    your hull and many small boats have been toppled over the years.
    Keep a good lookout!
    
    Brian
                                                            
    

re .8:

Well, sometime whales do bump into boats intentionally. Some years ago a 
whale (thought to be male) apparently thought that a Valiant 40 was a 
female whale and spent some hours rubbing and bumping against the hull. 
A bump that is gentle to the whale may not be so gentle to the crew of 
the boat. The amorous whale bumped the Valiant 40 hard enough to knock 
some books off the chart table. 

    I think I mentioned this in another note.  Two years ago we were
    doing the Monhegan race in our Express 37.  Blasting downwind about
    3 in the morning.  There were four of us on deck.  I was driving,
    one guy was trimming the chute and two others being rail meat and
    snoozing.  Rest of the crew was below resting.  All of a sudden
    a whale sounds right next to us.  I mean about ten to fifteen feet
    away!  The water washing of his (her?) back rolled the boat noticibly.
    Scared the "wits" out of me and the trimmer.  The exhaust did stink
    very, very bad.  This whale hung out with us until sunrise, constantly
    surfacing very close.  Got some great pictures (using a flash and
    sacrificing night vision for a bit).  We speculate that the speedo
    which operated on sonic impulses may have been the source of
    attraction.  At sunrise the fella dove and we never saw it again.
    After the initial shock we never had the feeling we were in any
    sort of danger of collision. The whale knew to keep just out of
    contact I guess.  Anyway, it livened up the night and made for great
    stories at the club!
    
    Dave
    
    

    Re: .7
    
    I was serious about turning on the motor (but not engaging the prop).
    
    Last year when we were of Provincetown a pod of Pilot whales came
    along side and kept pace with us for a while. It ended when some
    person in a 34 Carver decided to come over for a look. As he got
    close, the whales sounded and were never seen again.
    
    When I have been on whale watching trips, they usually shut down
    the engines or throttle way back when the boat is near a whale
    supposedly not to scare off the whale. Apparently many of them have
    scars from a close encounter with a prop and thus they are more
    wary around engine noise.
    
    Everything I have heard indicates that in general whales are very
    well behaved around boats, but there have been stories about boats
    loosing rudders when colliding with a whale sleeping on the water,
    or getting knocked around when the whale wants to rub against the
    hull.
    
    /jim

    While we're on the subject......
    
    I would like to take my 8 year old daughter on a whale watch this
    summer. What time of the summer gives you the best chance of seeing
    whales - especially humpbacks. We will be taking a charter out of
    the Mass. shore - which charters are the best?
    
    		Thanks,
    
    		Gregg
    

    Why not sound your Freon powered air horn under water to scare off
    unwanted sharks or whales?
    
    I would think that the sound from that device would be devistating.
    
    Paul

    In all seriousness the best way to keep the whale away is to turn
    on your depth sounder.  It serves that same purpose as the transducer
    used by Greenpeace.  The objective is not to scare the whale away,
    but to let them know your there.  If they are sleeping (basking)
    or just trying to scratch their backs on your barnacles, the sounder
    pulse will let them know.
    
    It's simple and all boats have one.  If you don't have a depth sounder
    you probably don't have to worry about whales because you're probably
    stuck in the mud!
    
    Good luck.
    
    

    re: #3
    
         There have been a number of collisons with whales.  From what
    I recall a boat lost it's rudder 2 years agon in the Corinthian
    200 race off of Race Point.  From what I have been told, sailboats
    are more prone to collisions particularly in the early early hours
    because of the whale's sleep cycle and the relative lack of noise
    comining from a sailboat.
    
      Joe

The question for this note should be "how to ask a whale to go away", 
not "how to scare a whale". The response of an animal to fear is either
to flee from the danger or to confront the danger (fight). Whatever you
do, you don't want to frighten the whale. What if the whale you frighten
happens to be a nursing mother, and she decides that attacking your boat
is the better way to protect her calf? Many of the whales in New England 
waters in the summer are calves, I think. I like to idea of using 
nonthreatening noises to let the whale know that I am nearby, but that I
am not another whale. (One reason that I wouldn't use black bottom paint
is that it is too whale-like in color.) 

Alan

    	I think we're all talking about "asking the whale to go away"
    	not frightening it.

    	I suppose you have to be in the position we were in (and others)
    	to understand the motivation behind this note.  The first thought
    	that goes through your mind is "boy, this is great!  A whale
    	right alongside the boat!"  The second thought is "This thing
    	is big, what do we do to move it along".
    
    	I suppose there's no one thing that will work with all whales,
    	so the best one can do is ride it out and enjoy the experience.
    
	[As far as the depth sounder goes, I've heard that it attracts
    	 whales.  Ours was not on at the time though..]
    

    I haven't heard of any sinkings in NE, but let's not forget that
    whales have collided with and sunk sailboats on occasion. One or
    more pilot whales sank Dougal Robertson's 46 foot (I think) wooden
    boat in the the Pacific (read the book).
    
    Ross Faneuf
    

    re .17:   Yes.  This happened to us when sailing in Mass Bay on
              the way to the canal.  It was only after I saw the
    	      whales did I realize that I had painted the bottom of
              my boat black.   Too late then.
    
    	      I can just picture some calf trying to stay close..
    	      Mommy! Mommy!...  
    
    	      Maybe next year I'll paint the bottom red.
    
    	Rick

>>>    	      Maybe next year I'll paint the bottom red.
    
But then some killer whale or shark or something will think you're 
a large meal oozing blood ...... Maybe a blue bottom?

    I read a report a few years ago from The University of Florida in
    Gainsville (I guess they have some spare time after football season.
    Anyhow, they were doing some research on which how sharks react
    to color.  It turned out that they absolutely hated black . . .
    maybe it reminded them of dolphins or something.  On the other hand,
    they absolutely LOVED orange, just the color of life jackets.  In
    fact, the researchers started calling the color "yum yum yellow."

From today's Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader:

WHALES SINK RACING YACHT

London (UPI) - A British yachtsman said yesterday he was nearly killed when a 
school of about 20 whales attacked and sank his yacht in the mid-Atlantic 
about 1000 miles west of the British Coast.

"They were trying to kill me, I am sure of it," said David Sellings in a radio 
interview with the British media. "I sent out a Mayday alert and just had time 
to get into my liferaft before my yacht sank."

    Gee, did he say what color they were ???  Was this man's name Ahab
    perchance ??
    
    I'm not going to pretend to know what goes through the mind of a
    whale, or what motivates them to behave the way they do.  But this
    seems like an extremely unusual incident to me.  We were sailing
    not 100 yards from one last Saturday out by Stellwagon bank, and
    it didn't seem the slightest bit interested in our presence.
    
    If they were "trying to kill" him, I should think they'd have less
    trouble sinking the liferaft than the yacht.
    
    ... Bob

    RE:24
    If they were trying to kill him, I don't think either the life raft
    or the yacht would present much of a challange. :-)
    

    We see a lot of whales here in Newfoundland, particularly around
    this time of year when various fish species come close in shore.
    Mostly we see small whales such as the Minke and Pot head.  The
    Pot heads are only slightly larger than a large porpoise while the
    Minkes can get up to around 40-50 feet.  We also sometimes see the
    basking sharks although they tend to stay more in the Atlantic than
    in the bays in which I sail.  The basking sharks (and some whales)
    often cause serious damage to fishing nets as they get inside the
    net, gorge themselves and then cannot get out again.
    
    Last year, four of us, when returning from an ovrnight sail on a
    C&C 27 (with a black painted bottom) ran into a very large number
    of Pot heads.  The pot heads move around in "Pods" of 8-12 and fish
    as a team (I guess).  Anyway, we were on a beam reach, screaming
    along not a care in the world when we looked back and from all over
    the bay pods started to close in on us.  We guessed at the time
    that there were probably up to 200 whales racing after the boat.
     The whales set up in a V behind us with their leaders sitting right
    on the stern quarter.  Could have touched the closest 2 or 3.
    
    It didn't take long to figure out that they were (just like us)
    out for a weekend's fun on the water ! they followed us for well
    over 2 hours although, when the wind came around a little to ur nose
    and we started to tack, they backed off.  After that happened, we
    then tacked very slowly and they just stuck behind us all the way
    until some idiot in a Tuna Boat decided to make the best of an otherwise
    bad day and try to foul hook one of the Pot heads to entertain his
    guests.  His engine seemed to scvare them away.
    
    I spoke to a Professor at the University here who specializes in
    whales and he told me that while he had never heard of quite such
    an incident before, he stressed that there was nothing to fear from
    whales other than accidents that happen when "big things" are around
    smaller things.