Panic major

madforsailing caught up with Graham Dalton who has 10 days to get to Newport to qualify for Around Alone

Graham Dalton at the wheel that was crushed when the mast came down

It seems hard to believe that there could be room for two Daltons in the world of offshore racing. But while his younger brother dons his lycra in preparation for an Ironman (a triathlon, but 10 times the distance), it is the elder Dalton, Graham, who is currently entering the public eye as skipper of the brand new HSBC-sponsored Open 60 Hexagon in next month's Around Alone.

When madfor sailing caught up with Dalton at the weekend in Hamble, the Hexagon team seemed to be in chaos. On her first attempt to cross the Atlantic the boat dismasted 200 miles out from the Scillies and since returning to the UK the team have had the pedal to the metal attempting to repair the boat, fit it with a replacement rig and get their skipper out to sea again in order to make the start on the opposite side of the Atlantic.

Aside from the shore crew, the familiar figure of Phil Wardrop was down below pouring over the chart table muttering about having to take the computers apart - they had packed up. There were also problems with the NKE autopilots, an issue we have heard echoed in other Open 60 campaigns.

Graham Dalton, definitely Grant's elder brother - he's taller, has the same irony-laden humour, but lacks Grant's well chiselled features born of relentless early morning runs (and his language is a good deal cleaner) - appeared remarkably relaxed as we sat in Hexagon's cockpit.

Dalton described the dismasting. "It was the second morning out of Plymouth, we were 200 miles off the Scillies, it was about 7am blowing 20-25 knots true, we were sailing at about 60 apparent, doing about 15 knots, not much of a sea running, probably a 3m sea, and there was very low cloud and it was raining. I was steering - I've been having a few problems with the pilots and I was on the windward wheel when all of a sudden there was a crack, I looked up and the top of the mast was heading towards me...which was some way to get woken up in the morning.

"One of the spreaders just grazed my jacket. The spreader crashed into the wheel and smashed the wheel," he continued. At the time they were on starboard tack and he had dived from the wheel for cover beneath the cuddy at the front of the cockpit as the upper half of the 95ft tall mast came toppling down - the carbon fibre spar broke midway between the first and second spreaders. At the time of the breakage the boat was powered up with the keel canted up to weather. Depowered and with the keel still canted, the boat listed to weather and soon the mast began to fall off the boat - it should be pointed out that Open 60 masts are deck, not keel stepped.

"It came out and you could hear the thing grinding away - and a 95ft rig by yourself, when you're not expecting it, when it's the first time it's happened to you - well it gets the old freckles moving mate!" Dalton described his predicament.

One of the joys of having PBO rigging is that it could be cut away with a knife but the drama wasn't over. "At one point when I was around about the mast, I got my foot caught in all the rigging. And I cut my foot out of it and a minute later the whole rig went over the side. I could have gone down with it," he recalled with a shudder. The two pieces of rig, spreaders and sails all went over the side to weather.

The whole operation took about two hours but finally with the rigging free he started the engine and had just enough fuel to make it to Brest. From there the boat was towed back to Hamble.

Why the mast broke remains a mystery. "There was no reason it should have fallen out," says Dalton. "Our maintenance was good. Everything had been gone over, everything had been tested before we left NZ. We can but guess." He says he is lucky that it didn't happen at 60degS or even a few days further out into the Atlantic. He isn't prepared to point the figure but says it can only be one of three things - a tube failure, a rigging failure or a fitting failure.

However all may still be revealed as remarkably 72 hours after the dismasting Hexagon's entire rig was trawled up off the ocean floor by a French fishing boat and is now sitting at CDK Composites in Port la Foret, in the possession of the salvors.

In the intervening days Dalton and his team have managed to get the boat back together. They have acquired Kingfisher's old mast and spare sails ( Hexagon's mast is 2m taller so the sails don't fit) and Ecover's boom - theirs was smashed during the dismasting. "Mark Turner and Ellen and Mike have been fantastic - everyone has rallied around to help," says Dalton. In addition the titanium pushpit and pulpit have had to be replaced along with the lifelines and the mangled wheel. The toerail has had to be repaired and there is still some delamination on the coachroof.

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