A few years ago I ran a thirty-five-foot trimaran into a forty-foot sperm whale in the Gulf Stream. For the owner aboard it was the second such encounter in as many trips to Bermuda in the same year. We were fortunate. One hull smacked down on top of the skin-covered island, but neither the whale nor the boat was permanently damaged. The Robertsons and the Baileys, though, were both sunk by whales. Feeding near the surface at night when the bigger plankton come up, a cetacean would not have noticed Solo’s hull cutting silently through the noisy breaking of the sea. A moderate-size thirty-five
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