Vendée Globe

Missing something..

Sam Davies is safe but out of the race after dismasting on Thursday night. She has switched on her engine and is heading to Madeira, 100 miles away, at about five knots. The weather is being kinder her and she was expected arrive on Saturday morning. She will be met there by Romain Attanasio, her partner and Erwan Lemeilleur, Savéol’s boat captain, who are arriving on Friday night. Davies will soon be back with her 13-month-old son, Ruben, but must have wished it would be under different circumstances and at least 74 days later.

She was near the centre of a depression with a 35 knots of wind and treacherous cross seas and was preparing to put a third reef in the mainsail, when she heard and felt the mast go.

"It was quite difficult conditions because I had just gone through the cold front and I had a really cross sea,” Davies said. “I was getting ready to my foul weather gear on and that’s when the squall was just finishing and the wind was dropping and the boat jumped off the top of the top of a wave and that’s when I had the impact.

"I could hear the mast rubbing against the hull and down the whole side of the hull and under the boat, so I knew that it could damage the hull if I was unlucky, so the main thing was to close all the watertight bulkheads in case it did get pierced.”

Davies, who finished fourth in the last Vendée Globe, waited until the wind had eased before cutting away the mast and rigging and with them any chance of finishing her second Vendée Globe.