Boaters have a whale of a tale after a 40-ton visitor gets the drop on them

CAPETOWN BAY, SOUTH AFRICA - A couple out enjoying a relaxing time on their yacht got an unexpected visitor when a massive whale decided to drop in on them.

Literally.

Pictures of the incident just outside Capetown Bay, South Africa, were snapped by a nearby tourist, who had been watching the mammal surface over and over again.

It finally surfaced right next to the boat belonging to sailing school partners Paloma Werner and Ralph Mothes, and then crashed right onto the boat.

“This massive creature,” said Poloma, describing what she saw, “just going up next to the boat, and smashing into the mast, and in slow motion the whole mast coming towards us.”

The 40-ton whale seemed unhurt and swam away, and Poloma and Ralph both lived to tell the tale…and even joke about it.

“We said ‘we had a whale of a time,’ laughs Paloma.

But the jokes on them: It’s going to cost at least $5,000 to fix their 32-foot sailboat. And environmental officials are checking reports that perhaps the sailboat was harassing the whale by being too close.

Paloma says that just isn’t so. She says they were sailing without a motor at the time, and that the whale simply didn’t hear them and just happened to surface in the wrong place.

But Paloma says they’re still lucky in one way: if the whale had landed on the deck rather than the mast…

“We would’ve been flat as a pancake.”