Mureadritta XL

Us Orizaba folks have been closely following the story unfolding about Mureadritta XL (the boat that finished one spot ahead of us in our division) hitting a whale 500 miles North of Hawaii as the boat was being delivered home, and sinking. The owner of the boat has been keeping us up to date via the Sailing Anarchy website forums, and this is from the front page:
They were rammed by a whale just forward of the starboard chainplate. They saw a pod of whales that came along side and swam down the starboard side. They think there was a mother and calf, the calf swam down the port side. The mother turned and rammed them to either protect the calf or just trying to get back to it. They tried stuffing some sails in the hole and wrapping another sail around the outside but couldn't get the water flow under control. They had time to grab a bunch of MRE's, water, GPS, sat phone and EPIRB for the life raft, and then watch the boat go down.
At one point we thought Orizaba might be one of the closest boats to help, and sent a note to Doug H. and gang to keep their eyes/ears open. As it turns out they were quickly found by the Coast Guard given their safety equipment, given some additional supplies, and then coordinated a pickup by diverting a nearby freighter that later had them transfer to a fishing boat heading to HI. They are safe and sound, soon to be back on shore, and being lauded by the Coast Guard as an example how a well prepared crew/boat can deal with such a catastrophe and be OK. More info/pics here: http://www.latitude38.com/LectronicLat/2006/0706/July31/July28.html#anchor1085433