told Alaska\u2019s News Source,<\/a> \u201cand then the boat just sank.\u201d<\/p>\nTania Lewis said she and her family had fallen asleep after a day of sailing in Glacier Bay on July 29 when the leviathan rocked the boat around 11:30 p.m.\u00a0 KTUU<\/p>\n
Lewis\u2019 son Lou was awake reading and was able to alert her and her husband that the ship was going down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But even with the early warning from their son, the seafaring family had no time to grab an emergency bag of supplies stored in the ship\u2019s cabin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To make matters worse, an emergency dinghy attached to the ship had been flipped over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[I]t was full of water, and it took us a little while to navigate that and finally accidentally flip the dinghy, in which case then we could turn it back over,\u201d according to Lewis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] heard a giant thud,\u201d Tania Lewis told Alaska\u2019s News Source, \u201cand then the boat just sank.\u201d\u00a0 KTUU<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how my husband and I got to shore,\u201d she said, adding that her son ended up swimming to land by using a backpack as a flotation device.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even after traversing 130 yards of water to reach solid ground, the Lewis family\u2019s problems were far from over.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, if we had time \u2014 and just even like a couple more minutes \u2014 we could have been really comfortable on the beach there. But as it was, we had very limited extra clothes and enough emergency equipment to make a fire,\u201d Lewis said.<\/p>\n
The clan had to brave the chilly temperatures and waited until 6:30 a.m. the following day until rescue crews could come to their aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The clan had to brave frigid weather and waited until 6:30 a.m. the following day until rescue crews could come to their aid.\u00a0 KTUU<\/p>\n
Crews were able to locate the wrecked ship, and found the giant hole the whale had made in its keel.<\/p>\n
Lewis said she spoke to a park biologist later on, who suggested that the whale had rammed the boat while chasing fish in the water.<\/p>\n
Lewis said she spoke to a park biologist later on, who suggested that the whale had rammed the boat while chasing fish in the water. KTUU<\/p>\n
But in spite of the wreck, Lewis said she and her family were still able to make the best of their time in the wilderness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a really magical night with the moon, full moon, eventually rose, and when else do you get to sit around the fire with your family all night?\u201d Lewis said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Alaska family found themselves treading water after a massive humpback whale rammed into their boat and sank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3292,16834,79,343699,42038,194,201],"class_list":["post-809780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alaska","tag-humpback-whales","tag-science","tag-shipwrecks","tag-swimming","tag-us-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}