A tourist from Botswana on a nearby ship off the coast of South Africa witnessed and captured the pictures of a lifetime as an endangered Southern right whale leap out of the water and smashed into a 32ft yacht!

Paloma Werner and her partner Ralph Mothes were enjoying a relaxing day’s sailing in Table Bay near Cape Town harbour when they first noticed  the whale about 100m off their beam. They assumed the whale was also enjoying the sunshine and were not overly worried when it meandered over and began swimming alongside. Ralphe assumed the huge whale (which can reach 60 tons) would simply go harmlessly under them, but instead it launched itself out of the sea briefly landing on the deck of the  steel hulled yacht demolishing the mast and most of the superstructure before slipping back into the sea.

Amazingly no one was hurt in the incident and Rolphe reported that he had “ducked behind the wheel” whilst  the whale demolished his craft. The extremely lucky couple, who operate a sailing academy in the Cape, managed to get their yacht back to harbour under engine power. Rather gallantly Ralphe Mothes said, in a subsequent interview, that he and his partner Paloma certainly did not bear a grudge against the whale despite being frightened for their lives.

"He was just having fun," Wener said. "They have very poor eyesight and obviously if they're breaching visibility is very poor. The whale did not intend to attack us."