Bennett abandons ship

After experiencing keel trouble while delivering his Open 50 singlehanded back to the UK

At 23.00 GMT last night while midway between the Canaries and the Azores, Alex Bennett was forced to abandon his yacht One Dream-One Mission, while on a singlehanded delivery trip back to the UK from Brazil.

On Thursday Bennett, 25, had reported a serious problem with the hydraulic system used for canting the 14ft long keel. The port side ram which controlled half of the lateral movement of his 14-foot long keel had sheered off leaving him in his own words, "running with one leg".

At 2000 last night without any warning a sudden squall hit the boat and in a breeze of 20-30 knots she heeled over and accelerated to 16 knots in the pitch dark.

Bennett recounted what happened next: "I heard a huge bang. I thought we'd snapped the keel and as the boat pitched up at a crazy angle, I climbed up onto the highest side. With all hell breaking loose, I released as many sails as I could and she came upright again. I winched in the genoa and looked overboard. The bulb was OK ­ it was the starboard ram that had gone and the keel was left swingly wildly".

He attempted to fix the damage by lashing the rod heads in place to lock the keel, but physically exhausted after two hours of trying he put out an urgency call. A German freighter 10 miles off responded and headed towards the stricken vessel. With his boat crippled and the threat of gale force conditions coming through his area within the next 36 hours, he was forced to take the sad decision to abandon the boat.

The incident comes just three weeks after he had tasted victory in his first international race, the 4,340 mile Transat Jacques Vabre from Le Havre to Brazil, with co-skipper Paul Larsen. Five days after his win he set sail alone for home to train for the rigours of solo ocean racing and his ultimate goal the Vendée Globe in 2004. He had covered over 2/3 of the distance home when disaster struck.

He is now heading for Trinidad with the German freighter, EWL Central America and is expected to fly home on 21st December.

One Dream-One Mission is the Adrian Thompson-designed Open 50 Pete Goss sailed in the 1996/7 Vendee Globe Challenge and sailed in the subsequent Vendee Globe by Patrice Carpentier. In addition to this Ellen MacArthur sailed it in the last Route de Rhum (her first ever Kingfisher sponsorship) and Emma Richards sailed the boat to a class win in last year's Europe 1 New Man STAR.