Scolamanzi - A Whale of a story left us all shell shocked!

A Whale of a story left us all shell shocked!
Still in disbelieve ? we are struggling to comprehend the extend of the sadness and emotional strain that one of our ARC Fleet Yachts? (?Outer Limit?) crew must be going through! On Friday late afternoon a whale struck their yacht and caused damage causing the boat to take in water and forced the crew to send out a May Day message for rescue! They had to abandon ship and were picked up by a Cargo vessel that is on her way to Italy.
This incident surely affects each and every one of us ? we have become one big family in support of this challenge to make it safely to the Azores and needless to say, we were shocked and terribly sadden by the news. My heart goes out to them and Alexandra and Mike on ?Halo? that was closes to them - overheard the stressful radio conversations between captain Joost and the rescue ship!
Sleep became impossible ? one found it hard to stop thinking about them! Switching off just would not happen! Suddenly being on watch is no longer about looking out for other ships and watching the wind ? I could not help to shift my focus to the 500- 800 meters closer to the boat rather than the horizon! Whale watching has taken on a totally different meaning all of a sudden. Wondering if there really is anything you can do to avoid something like that, make you realise how little control we have on this vast open sea on a small little yacht. Playing the fields of something much bigger than you: nature and all her elements and creatures!
Within 15 hours from the disastrous news of ?Outer Limit? we heard about another yacht that has been abandoned (not one of our fleet) ? reason unclear ? so somewhere two yachts are drifting ? night watches became a nightmare ? how would you spot them at night? Would they have sunk by now? What would we do in a situation like that? What do you do first and what do you take and what do you leave? The ?What?s? became another nightmare on its own!
I pray to God that those four lovely people will somehow find a way to cope and recover from this ordeal and get to a safe destination to join their families! You will be in our thoughts all the time! May we all have His guidance to safety for the remaining of this trip.