(Updates with nationality of injured, official correction of
crew member’s name)
April 1 (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard rescued two
seriously injured British crew members from an Australian yacht
taking part in an around-the-world race on Sunday after it was
hit by a huge wave in the Pacific.
Four of 13 crew members, three of them Britons and the other
an Australian, were hurt when the wave hit the Geraldton Western
Australia on Saturday about 400 nautical miles off the
Californian coast.
The wave disabled the yacht’s main steering and some of its
communications equipment, Coast Guard and race officials said.
It was one of 10 boats competing in the Clipper 11-12 Round
the World Yacht Race that started in Britain.
It had been sailing to San Francisco from China and was
still about two hundred miles from its San Francisco Bay
destination, using emergency steering, on Sunday evening, but
was expected to reach port within a day, race organizers said.
Coast Guard spokesman Barry Bena said severe weather had
made it impossible for a rescue helicopter to take the two most
seriously hurt crew members off the yacht directly and they were
transported to a Coast Guard cutter by small boat.
Skipper Juan Coetzer identified the four injured crew as
Britons Jane Hitchins, a 50-year-old doctor from Kent, Nik
Brbora, a 29-year-old software engineer from London, Mark
Burkes, 47, from Worcestershire, and 62-year-old Australian Max
Wilson from Queensland.
DeeDee Taft, a spokeswoman for the Western Australia team,
said Hitchins and Brbora were the two injured sailors taken off
the yacht by the Coast Guard. Hitchins was the most seriously
hurt, suffering at least one broken rib and a punctured lung, a
Coast Guard official said.
In a statement on the race website, Coetzer said the yacht
had been making good speed, “Then at our watch change, just
before the sun came up, a monstrous foaming swell broke over our
stern.”
A long-range Coast Guard HC-130 plane dropped medical
supplies to the vessel on Saturday.
The yacht was expected to reach port at Oakland sometime on
Monday afternoon, the Coast Guard said. Officials said the other
nine yachts had completed this leg of the race.
(Reporting by David Bailey and Erik Tavcar; editing by David
Brunnstrom)
