Vendée Globe: Kito de Pavant in distress!

This morning, the 55-year-old sailed over a UFO at 16 knots in extremely heavy seas and severely damaged the keel of his "Bastide Otio".

De Pavant reports from on board: "It was a huge impact and the boat came to a complete stop. The rear keel suspension was torn out, the keel is only hanging on the hydraulic cylinder, moving back and forth and slowly cutting through the hull! The entire keel sheathing is destroyed and large quantities of water are entering the ship. But at the moment the water ingress is limited to the engine section. I currently have 40 knots of wind and waves five to six metres high. The boat is stopped. I've hoisted the mainsail to reduce the heel. But the situation has stabilised somewhat at the moment. I have my survival kit next to me. Someone has to come and rescue me!"

The race organisers have now contacted the MRCC in France, established contact with the ship "Marion Dufresne" 110 nautical miles away and sent it to help the Frenchman.

Just yesterday, the Frenchman, who was sailing in the area of a very stormy depression, had emailed from on board that the swell was chaotic and the wind had increased to 40 knots. However, he was still travelling extremely fast under a double reefed main and small headsail, as the video above shows just beforehand. De Pavant sailed to 10th place, his boat, the old "Virbac Paprec" owned by Jean-Pierre Dick, is considered good and reliable. This is already his third Vendée Globe. He has already failed to finish twice, most recently in 2012 when he had a collision with a fishing trawler off the coast of Portugal.

It is already the sixth collision with flotsam (or whales or fish) during the race, after Vincent Riou ("PRB"), Morgan Lagravière ("Safran"), Sébastien Josse ("Edmond de Rothschild"), Alex Thomson ("Hugo Boss") and Roman Attanasio have already been hit.

This means that the race currently has two emergencies after the foil of Sébastien Josse's Open 60 was badly damaged yesterday afternoon. He is currently running away from the storm to avoid putting any further strain on the boat. The centreboard severely damaged the hull when the boat shot over a wave and drifted into the next valley. It is still unclear whether the boat can be repaired.