He Survives by a Fluke of Luck

--British yachtsman David Sellings’ participation in a transatlantic race came to an abrupt end when about 20 whales attacked and sank his sloop in the mid-Atlantic about 1,000 miles west of the British coast, he said. “They were trying to kill me, I am sure of it,” Sellings said in a radiotelephone interview with a British news agency from a West German freighter that rescued him eight hours after the incident. “I sent out a Mayday alert and just had time to get into my life raft before my yacht sank.” Sellings, 40, said his sloop, Hyccup, sank in seconds when the biggest whale smashed a hole in its side. “(The whales) had been squealing and snorting and jumping wildly,” he said. “Now they were quiet. They just circled around me in my life raft a couple of times and then dispersed.” The British Coast Guard said whale attacks are rare but the mammals may have seen the boat as a threat to their young.

--Gun-control advocate Carl T. Rowan, a syndicated columnist, used a .22-caliber gun to wound a teen-ager who had taken a late-night swim in his pool in Washington, officials said. Ben Smith, 18, of suburban Chevy Chase, Md., was treated for a wrist wound and released. He and Laura Bachman, 19, of Bethesda, Md., were charged with unlawful entry, but the charges were dropped. Rowan said that he was awakened at 1:55 a.m. by a noise, saw four people outside and called police. When he went to the pool door to admit police, he said, he was “confronted by a tall young man striding over as if coming into my house.” Rowan said he thought the man was threatening him and that he meant to fire a warning shot but hit the man on the wrist by mistake. He said he warned the youth that he was armed. In an interview, Smith admitted that he was trespassing on Rowan’s property but said that he did not threaten him in any way.

--Tammy Faye Bakker was back in familiar “PTL Club” surroundings--but this time she was in the studio audience rather than in front of the cameras. Bakker, the wife of scandalized PTL founder Jim Bakker, sang hymns along with the rest of the audience. “Top volume,” she said. “That’s the only way I know how to sing.” There was no official acknowledgement of Bakker’s presence, so home viewers never knew she was in the studio. She received a ripple of applause from the 350 people attending the show in Ft. Mill, S. C., but said she felt slighted when only one of the show’s backup singers came over to hug her. “Only one singer came to say hello,” she said. “That’s terrible. And I’ve been so nice to them too.”