Cynics at various online forums are insisting this must be a Photoshopped image, but I don't think so. News outlets in South Africa are reporting this as fact: on Sunday a large southern right whale hurled itself on to a 33-foot steel sloop belonging to Paloma Werner and Ralph Mothes, who run the Cape Town Sailing Academy. This occurred in Table Bay. The whale reportedly was uninjured, but the boat didn't fare so well.

Just had a conversation last week with Bruce Johnson, chief designer at S&S, about this new "modern traditional" concept design they're floating. Bruce describes it as a scaled-down version of the 56-foot S&S sloop Anna that was launched at Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine back in 2007. Apparently Anna has inspired some lust in the hearts of more than a few sailors (Bruce mentioned in particular a group in Martha's Vineyard) who have nevertheless balked at her price tag. Where Anna cost about $2 million to build, Bruce estimates this somewhat smaller vessel can be had in cold-molded wood for about $1.15 million, or in fiberglass for somewhere south of a million.

Not that I expect too many of you have that kind of change lying around. But you can dream, can't you? Personally, I could look at the lines of boats like this all day without getting bored.

Some Australian news outlets reported yesterday that Plastiki, the unique 60-foot plastic catamaran constructed of 12,500 plastic bottles, had "come to grief" some 200 miles off the east coast of Oz and was in the midst of being rescued. The crew of Plastiki, meanwhile, have adamantly insisted they are fine and merely called for a tow a bit sooner than they originally expected. As of this moment, the vessel is safe in Moloolaba (having been towed in by the Aussie Coast Guard) and is on schedule to conclude its voyage in Sydney this weekend.

Plastiki's "grief," it seems, stemmed from a disabled engine and her complete inability to sail to windward. Rather than be driven north against their will, it appears the crew preferred to be towed closer to their intended destination of Coffs Harbor.

Marine biologists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have announced the discovery of a bizarre and extremely dangerous species of man-eating shark. Designated formally as Lamniforma Octopoda, the sharktopus, as it is referred to colloquially, has been cited in a number of lethal attacks on swimmers over the past month.

Officials at WHOI have urged all those spending their summer vacations on or near the water to exercise extreme caution at all times. The sharktopus, they say, has exhibited an alarming ability to exit the water while seeking prey. Press here to watch a video detailing the feeding habits and origins of this fearsome creature.

This could be one of those Twilight Zone triple-coincidence stories that once upon a time kept me up to my armpits in pulpy comic books. Cue orchestra; dial up the basso profundo Rod Serling voice-over: "And there's the signpost, straight up ahead…"

Should taxpayers have to spend large sums of money rescuing overzealous sailors who get into trouble they might easily have avoided? Should they pay to rescue sailors who don't actually need rescuing in the first place? Questions like this are bubbling up into the public consciousness, thanks to teen sailor Abby Sunderland, who was recently plucked at great public expense from her dismasted boat after she foolishly tried to transit the southern Indian Ocean during winter.

Coincidentally (or not?), French legislators last week started debating a new law that would enable the French government to seek compensation from "people who have deliberately exposed themselves, without a legitimate motive stemming from their professional situation or a situation of emergency, to risks of which they could not have been unaware." This, evidently, in reaction to a spate of expensive rescue operations financed by the French government, including the launching last year of a full-on commando raid to liberate bluewater sailors on a French yacht that was hijacked off Somalia.