King's Cup gets under way

King's Cup gets under way

Phuket: The King's Cup Regatta, with 93 boats from 16 countries, began yesterday. Neil Pryde's HiFi team opened their account with a six-second win over Beau Geste in race one of the IRC Zero class.

Boats in action at the King's Cup Regatta.     

But Beau Geste beat HiFi in the next two races to stay on top at the end of of the first day.

In the IRC One, Paul Winkelmann skippered Hong Kong-registered Island Fling to win race one and three with EFG Mandrake taking race two.

In the IRC Two, Hannes Waimer's TBG won race one and three while Foxy Lady finished first in race two.

In the IRC Three, Australian team Foreign Affair claimed victory in race one and Peter Dyer's Madame Butterfly triumphed in race two with Royal Thai Navy 1 skippered by Wiwat Poonpat coming in second.

In Alicante, Spain, nine sailors waded to safety in pitch darkness in the middle of the Indian Ocean on Sunday after their Volvo Ocean Race boat became stranded on a reef.

The collision threatens to write-off their €4.5 million (US$5.6m) vessel, a one-design Volvo Ocean 65, and scupper their challenge just seven weeks into the nine-month marathon offshore race.

The drama began on Saturday when the boat under Australian skipper Chris Nicholson sped into the reef at more than 15 knots and immediately became stuck fast. The collision smashed both the rudders and soon water was spilling into a sealed compartment in the stern.

At midnight, Nicholson gave his nine-strong crew the order to abandon the boat and they waded knee-deep in water over the reef to find a rock, which offered a mercifully dry resting place.

They remained there for two hours until a small rescue craft from the local coastguard picked them up at the first sign of daylight and dropped them on the Íle du Sud which is part of St Brandon, a tiny archipelago of islets 430km north-east of Mauritius. To add to the sailors' concerns, the nearby waters are known to be a popular cruising area for sharks.

However, none of the sailors were injured and the team plans to transport them to Mauritius over the next 24 hours via a ferry which services St Brandon. None could be contacted on the islet, which boasts just one house, but other sailors in the race sympathised with the shock of losing their boat — at least temporarily — in such dramatic fashion.

"It's incredible nobody's injured with the boat broken against land, enough to abandon it," said Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing's Roberto Bermudez de Castro.

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