It was a rough week for solo ocean racing. Three sailors racing alone across the Atlantic had to pull out within days of each other, and one needed a helicopter rescue in the middle of the South Atlantic.
The most serious case involved Dutch skipper Guy de Boer, competing in the Golden Globe Race — the retro around-the-world event sailed in vintage yachts with no modern assistance. On 2 November he fell inside the cabin of his 1986 Tashiba 36, Spirit, hitting his head and possibly blacking out. At first things seemed stable enough that he set course for Brazil on medical advice, and as late as Saturday night his team was posting reassuring updates. Then his condition collapsed overnight: by satellite call he told organisers he could no longer use his left arm, stand, keep his balance or eat, and sounded groggy and incoherent.
A Brazilian Navy helicopter launched from the frigate Barroso with two divers aboard, flew roughly 50 minutes to reach Spirit about 870 miles east of Rio de Janeiro, and had de Boer safely lifted by mid-morning on Sunday 8 November. He is now being assessed on the warship.
Meanwhile in the Route du Rhum, the solo transatlantic sprint to Guadeloupe, two IMOCA skippers diverted to the Azores. Italian Ambrogio Beccaria fell hard against the winch pedestal in his cockpit during a storm with 5-metre waves on 5 November, suspecting broken ribs. Cockpit cameras filmed the fall. Unable to manoeuvre or even find a pain-free position, he retired and limped 400 miles to Horta on Faial, arriving around 4am Sunday — where his team planned a somewhat chaotic boarding by RIB since he could barely sail the boat in.
He wasn't even the first. French star Jérémie Beyou, skipper of Charal, retired on 3 November and was later diagnosed at Horta Hospital with a head injury plus multiple fractures to vertebrae and ribs. The timing stings: it was his final race under his long-running Charal sponsorship, and he was near the front when he had to stop. He'll fly home to France to recover while his team delivers the boat back.
For anyone following offshore racing — or dreaming of the Azores themselves — the week is a reminder of how unforgiving the North and South Atlantic can be in November, and how remote Horta serves as the unofficial rescue port for the mid-Atlantic. For travellers, the practical takeaway is milder: Horta on Faial is a well-serviced island town famous among sailors, with good medical facilities for a mid-ocean waypoint, and the Azores make an easy, green stopover between Europe and the Americas.
