Drama in Velux for AGD A Southern Man

by Tim Kelly on 13 Mar 2007
AT 1930 UTC on Monday March 12, the watchkeeper in the VELUX 5 OCEANS race office noticed that Graham Dalton’s boat A SOUTHERN MAN – AGD had stopped.

Approximately one hour later Dalton phoned into the race office to report that he had hit a UFO in the water; it was pitch black so he was uncertain what it was but it had caused serious damage to one of his rudders.

The damage sustained had forced him to cut the cassette away and remove the rudder blade. Dalton is currently in around 15 knots of east-southeasterly breeze just over 150 miles off the coast of Brazil. The Kiwi skipper is currently assessing the damage to his boat and is in constant communication with his boat builder to establish a method to stabilize the remaining rudder so that he can recover steerage.

The VELUX 5 OCEANS race office is in regular communication with Graham Dalton and his shore crew, and more information will be released in due course.

Boat Positions as at 05:32 UTC 13 March 2007

	Yacht	Skipper	Latitude		Longitude	Course (°)	Speed (knot)	DTF (nautical miles)	Dist - last Pos (nautical miles)	Dist - 24h (nautical miles)	Average speed - 24h (knots)	VMG - 24h (knots)
1	Cheminées Poujoulat			Bernard Stamm		FINISHED: 48 days, 22 hours and 59 minutes
2	Spirit of Yukoh	Kojiro Shiraishi	31° 14.32 N		070° 51.64 W	251	8	435	38.3	220.8	9.2	8.5
3	PAKEA	Unai Basurko	06° 37.61 N		048° 31.51 W	293	10.5	2370	56.6	290.6	12.11	10.67
4	A Southern Man-AGD	Graham Dalton	02° 45.44 S		036° 03.76 W	274	2.3	3272	11.3	122.8	5.12	5.03
5	SAGA Insurance	Sir Robin Knox-Johnston	12° 26.92 S		035° 29.64 W	20	10.2	3913	53	234.9	9.79	9.79