Two fishermen say they’re lucky to be alive after a humpback whale flung itself onto their boat and knocked them into the water.
The harrowing incident occurred Tuesday off the coast of New Hampshire, where Gregg Paquette and Ryland Kenney were fishing from their 23-foot boat. Although the pair had spotted the whale a few minutes earlier, Paquette says it was a good distance away. "We didn't see him for a couple of minutes, and then the next thing we knew, he popped up and landed right on the transom of the boat," the Groveland resident says. "Then all of a sudden, I look down, the boat is pitching up, the transom is going down into the water."
The transom wasn’t the only thing to go into the water. Both men ended up in the Atlantic next to their capsized boat. Fortunately, brothers Wyatt and Colin Yager were fishing nearby and pulled the men out of the water. "It's kind of a miracle that I'm alive," Kenney says. "I don't know what was going through my head. Just, kind of, survival."