KEY POINTS:
New Zealand solo yachtsman Graham Dalton - now trailing the field in the Velux 5 Oceans round-the-world race - has been hammered by an unrelenting series of setbacks.
Dalton took his yacht, A Southern Man - AGD, into the northern Brazilian port of Fortaleza on March 14 after
hitting a submerged object to have electronic equipment fixed and to replace the damaged port rudder.
Since then he has been struck down by sickness and diarrhoea and collapsed in the lobby of his hotel.
While he was in his sickbed, the unattended boat was plundered of all the communication equipment, GPS equipment, laptops, handheld phones and cameras.
"Barely able to function, Dalton spent a day with police trying to get to the bottom of this horrendous outcome," race organisers said. "However, it appears increasingly unlikely that the police will be able to recover his stolen equipment."
Dalton told organisers he had managed to get a GPS unit and a satellite phone. He planned to rejoin the race two days ago and rely on a traditional barometer, compass and paper charts in the thousands of kilometres remaining in this leg of the race.
But when Dalton took his yacht out into the harbour for final checks on his pilot system so he could sail without computerised weather forecasts or electronic charts, he found more damage caused by the underwater collision.
He called race director David Adams to say that the keel "bulb" - the main weight in the keel - was missing.
"It was blowing 8 knots and the boat fell over," he said.
"I tried to cant the keel and I couldn't see it. So I dived down; the visibility was exceedingly poor but I could see that the bulb has gone."
Dalton returned to the marina to re-assess his options, only to be hit another blow.
It was a public holiday so there was nobody available to work on the keel.
Two contestants have already ended the second leg of the race in Norfolk, Virginia. First was Bernard Stamm (Cheminees Poujoulat), followed by Kojiro Shiraishi (Spirit of Yukoh).
Dalton, in the smallest yacht in the field, is still 3226 nautical miles from Norfolk.
Dalton's 15m yacht is named for his son, Anthony (Tony) Graham Dalton, who died of cancer aged 23.
This is Dalton's second tilt at the race. In 2003, racing Hexagon, he had to withdraw as his mother was dying.
- NZPA