Alex Thomson, the yacht captain, abandoned a boat in the Southern Ocean in the 2006-2007 season Velux 5 Oceans Race and now it has been discovered on a South American beach. Rolex Enterprise Award winner Cristian Donoso found IMOCA 60 Hugo Boss yacht tuckered out on the Patagonian coast in Chile during a canoeing expedition in recent months in the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park.
Based on wind and currents, the adventurer approximated the yacht would have journeyed some 2000 kilometers (i.e. around 13000 miles) from where Thomson was pushed to abandon it, in order to reach its last resting spot near the southern tip of South America.
Thomson shared Donoso’s tale on his Facebook account which said: “A couple of weeks [ago] during an expedition to go kayaking … by the desolate coast of Patagonia Sahara, we discovered inside the National Park Bernardo O’Higgins the yacht ‘Hugo boss’, the British Skipper Alex Thomson lost in 2006, 1,000 miles south of South Africa during the round the world velux 5 OCEANS.”
It further stated that to get to the coast, the ‘Hugo boss’ yacht had to travel over 20000 km adrift, pushed by the currents and winds, crossing the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and going to the south of national like India, Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.
Thomson stated that his team would make contact with authorities to help with the removal of the yacht from that place. The British captained abandoned his yacht when the keel pushed a structural failure and the boat turtled only thirty-three days and seven-thousand miles into the 1st leg of the round-the-world Velux 5 Oceans race.
