By SUZANNE McFADDEN
Solo round-the-world skipper Yves Parlier was last night limping towards Australia with a makeshift rig after his boat was dismasted in the Southern Ocean.
Organisers of the Vendee Globe race were worried after not hearing from the 40-year-old Frenchman for 18 hours - and sent the youngest woman in
the fleet, English sailor Ellen MacArthur, to his rescue.
But yesterday afternoon, Parlier got news through to race headquarters that he was all right.
Parlier has fashioned a jury rig from the wreckage on board his boat, Aquitaine, and is now making his way to Perth, 1600 miles north from where the accident happened.
In his message, Parlier said he had been sailing under a storm cloud, when the winds suddenly quickened.
"Everything happened very quickly," he said. "My boat took off, gybed uncontrollably and wiped out on its side.
"As she came back up, the shock loads were so big that the boat gybed a second time, and I was thrown across the cockpit.
"The boat took off again on a surf, but nose-dived with the water coming right up to the mast - and it was that that brought the mast down."
The Frenchman, who led the fleet in the early days of the nonstop circumnavigation, said he was not injured in the dismasting. But he is now withdrawing from the race.
MacArthur, the tiny 24-year-old skipper on board Kingfisher, was four hours from Parlier's last reported position when she got the call to find him.
Once news came through from Parlier confirming that he was all right, she rejoined the race.
MacArthur, who sailed with Parlier on Aquitaine in last year's Transatlantic Race, said she was gutted that that the experienced sailor was now out of the fleet.
Of the 24 skippers who left France 40 days ago, only 18 still remain with two-thirds of the journey to go. Their next sight of land will be Cape Horn, 7000 miles away.
