British sailor Ross Hobson has become the latest competitor in the single handed transatlantic Route du Rhum race to be rescued from mid Atlantic, after his 13m Nic Bailey-designed trimaran Ideal Stelrad capsized in 50kts of wind shortly before midnight last night.
Senior lecturer / consultant in orthodontics at Newcastle Dental School, Ross has been sailing since boyhood and is hugely experienced, with numerous race wins and records to his name.
Fortunately he was rescued unharmed and is now safely aboard a Spanish freighter, Carmen, and due to arrive in Santander on Sunday.
Another British competitor, Nick Bubb, broke his boom on the Class 40 monohull Kenmore Homes in the same vicious conditions - some of the worst he has seen of his sailing career with winds gusting up to 50kts combined with a huge seaway, he reported.
"It was pitch black and, with waves breaking over the deck, I felt it was best to let the pilot get on with it. After an hour or so I braved the foredeck to check everything was OK with my Solent, which was furled away, and to retrieve some loose lines.
"Whilst I was up there the boat surfed down one particularly big wave and bore away as the wind angle changed, unfortunately just a tiny bit too much and the boat crash gybed whilst I hung on for dear life.
"I worked my way back to the cockpit not too concerned. Crash gybing is something which does inevitably happen to solo sailors every now and again and with no spinnakers up and such a tiny mainsail there should be no problems.
"As I cleared the reefed part of the mainsail off the coachroof and prepared to gybe back I noticed the angle of the outboard end of the boom to the mast was wrong and my heart fell as my brain calculated what had happened.
"As ever I had put a preventer on the boom with a fuse system for such circumstances and this had worked properly it seemed. The fuse was broken, anyway. So I can only conclude that the boom broke (in the middle) when the end hit the runner. We always thought the section looked a little small when it turned up from the manufacturer a few days before my qualifier.
"Anyway, I then fought the huge flapping mainsail and boom pieces down onto the deck,removed the headboard car and lashed them all down. At the moment I am still running downwind with just my staysail trying to decide what to do.
"I am in the middle of the Atlantic with no struts/poles/tubes to splint the boom with and I am very unlikely to have enough food, water or fuel (to charge the batteries with) to make it to the Caribbean in this state. Coupled with that, we have headwinds forecast in a few days."
He said limping across to the Azores - 500 miles away to the east - was looking like my best option, once the gale passes.
"It will mean retiring from the race, something which in the last five years and around 40 offshore races I have only had to do once before. Even the broken mast on the trimaran in the Round Britain earlier this summer didn't stop us.
"But it does seem to be the only sensible thing to do. I will be endangering myself to carry on in this disabled state and any further issues would make a tough situation very difficult.
"After all the hard work from so many people that has gone into making this project happen, I am totally devastated, but left with little option."
Meanwhile seven of the biggest multihulls have crossed the finish line in Guadeloupe, but many of the monohull classes still have quite a way to go in the race.
British sailor Brian Thompson in the Open 60 Artemis is sailing consistently sixth in his class but hopes to improve on that once the expected big winds fill in.
Yesterday Thompson said: "We will finally, hopefully, go through the cold front and the wind will change really rapidly. I am expecting it to increase up to 25 to 30 knots. I am now making sure that the boat is all ready for that, and once we get to the cold front we will have fast downwind conditions for at least two or three days towards Guadeloupe."
Fellow British sailor Lia Ditton remains in second place in Class 3 with her 50 footer Dangerous When Wet.
There is most British interest in the 40 foot fleet, the biggest in the race. Phil Sharp in philsharpracing.com, the only unsponsored British entry, is currently leading the class by 120 miles. He still has nearly 1,600 miles to go to the finish at Guadeloupe.
Ian Munslow was in 9th place in the class and Nick Bubb 11th before his boom broke.
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