KEY POINTS:
Kiwi yachtsman Graham Dalton has sent a short but precise message from the Southern Ocean to the headquarters of the Velux 5 Oceans solo-round-the-world yacht race.
"Position 49.17S 25.49E. Iceberg the size of a house. About 3m out of the water and well rounded. Graham."
The Sunday Times
newspaper in London reported he was concerned about the possibility of a collision with an iceberg because his radar had fallen off the mast.
"They're testing conditions down here at the moment," he wrote. "The wind is blowing about 20 knots but the air is so dense, it would be more like 30 knots in a normal part of the world. There is nothing normal about the Southern Ocean."
Dalton and veteran British sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnston are facing an arduous 5632km duel for the last podium place in Fremantle, Australia, where the race is making a port call part way through its 48,000km round-the-world course.
Dalton, 53, is the brother of New Zealand's America's Cup team manager, Grant Dalton. He is 14 years younger than Knox-Johnston and sailing the only 50-foot boat in a fleet of Open 60s, in a race where his start from Bilbao was delayed while his mast was repaired.
The Sunday Times said Dalton's performance on the first leg of the race was remarkable and the yachtsman's motivation lay in the picture of his son engraved on the bow of his boat and the initials included in its name.
The yacht, Southern Man AGD, is named after his son, Anthony Graham, who died from cancer at 23 last December.
Dalton's second campaign for the Velux was put on hold for five months while he stayed at his son's bedside but every kilometre of the race had been "powered by Tony's spirit".
"He wanted me to do this race. After I'd committed to it, we talked about the name for months. I said he could name it but he died before we finalised anything. The boat's a southern man and so was Tony."
Dalton has endured one rough passage through the Southern Ocean on the previous edition of the two-stop round-the-world race when his boom snapped just west of Cape Horn and his Open 60 rolled. He was dismasted again just north of the Falklands and had to retire. "I don't have a problem with failure," said Dalton. "I have a problem with not trying."
Dalton is now closing on Knox-Johnston's yacht Saga Insurance. The second-placegetter, Kojiro Shiraishi, arrived in Fremantle last week, three days behind Bernard Stamm, the winner of the first leg.
- NZPA