Solo sailor Graham Dalton has survived a close encounter of the sea mammalian kind - but the seal was not so lucky.
Dalton, who is about 210 nautical miles southeast of the South Island in the Velux 5 Oceans solo round the world yacht race, reported his yachtA Southern Man-AGD was battling the perils of the Southern Ocean.
"Don't know what it is about AGD but we seem to attract the mammals of the sea,' he told the sailworld.com website.
"Flying along with the stereo blaring and a strange piece of seaweed appeared ahead."
Dalton was unable to change course in time.
"As we ploughed over the top of it there was a bump on the hull. I only had a moment to think, 'seaweed is hard' when crash... it hit the starboard rudder.
"Glancing astern my piece of seaweed turned out to be a seal, or should I say, ex-seal."
As at midnight New Zealand time, Dalton's yacht A Southern Man-AGD -named after his son who died from cancer in late 2005 - was in third place behind Switzerland's Bernard Stamm in Cheninees Poujalat and Japan's Kojiro Shiraishi in Spirit of Yukoh.
