NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Another good reason to keep away from that wet stuff ...
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2003 Jan 18, 05:18 +1100
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2003 Jan 18, 05:18 +1100
Giant squid attacks boat January 17 2003 A French yacht taking part in the Jules Verne round-the-world sailing trophy has been attacked by a giant squid in the mid-Atlantic, its skipper announced by radio link. Veteran yachtsman Oliver de Kersauson, at the helm of the trimaran Geronimo, said the boat was hit by strange vibrations on Sunday, so he sent a crew member below deck to try to identify what was wrong. "Suddenly he saw something moving," de Kersauson said. "It was tentacles. "The squid was pulling really hard, so we put the boat about and when we came to a stop the tentacles let go. We saw it behind the boat - and it was enormous. I have been sailing for 40 years, and I have never seen the like," he said. Crew member Didier Ragault, who spotted the creature through a port-hole said "the tentacles were as thick as my arm wearing an oil-skin, and I immediately thought of the damage it could do. "When we saw it behind the boat it must have been seven, eight or nine metres long," he said. The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is the world's largest invertebrate and can reach 18 metres in length, but it is also highly elusive, with only about 250 sightings officially recorded -- most of them of dead animals on beaches. AFP http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2661691.stm
