Eight Danes were rescued after their sailing boat collided with a whale or two in the Pacific Ocean between Peru and French Polynesia, the Danish defense said on Thursday.
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The Danish Rescue and Coordination Center (JRCC) had been contacted the day before by the parents of a little girl on the boat.
The daughter managed to reach her father “from an Iridium satellite phone, where she reported that the 51-foot sailboat had capsized after colliding with a whale or two,” a defense statement said it says that “the eight Danes were there safely in the lifeboat”.
Their raft was then somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, between Peru and French Polynesia.
After being picked up by a fishing vessel, the eight people were rescued by the Singapore-flagged container ship Mathilde Schulte, which was about a 10-hour voyage from the scene of the collision.
They are now en route to Papeete, French Polynesia, the statement said.
According to the maritime surveillance website Vessel Finder, the container ship is expected to reach this port on June 26.