Yachting: Dalton's dream ends in despair

Yachtie Graham Dalton's dream is all but over. The Around Alone yachting race skipper is facing a crushing defeat after gear failure robbed him of the time needed to complete the fourth leg of the race and be ready for the next.

The Tauranga sailor is under tow in the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina after snapping his mast in several pieces in big seas on Sunday morning.

The calamity was compounded when a rope snagged around his propeller while a fishing boat from Uruguay was transferring diesel to his stricken vessel, leaving him dead in the water.

Dalton has suffered a string of setbacks since his qualifying voyage from Britain to New York in August -- including breaking his mast and boom and enduring automatic pilot and communications equipment failures.

It now seems that he will be unable to continue in the ocean racing epic. Even if sponsor Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation agreed to ship a replacement mast from England, he would not have enough time to make the April 13 leg five start.

It would cost HSBC up to $500,000 to fly the mast to South America.

Dalton's business manager Bob Gill today said HSBC had no obligation to airfreight the mast.

The bank is understood to have already poured $13 million into his campaign.

Dalton's wife Robbie today told the Bay of Plenty Times her husband had not given up hope and had not officially retired from the race.

She has no hard feelings towards HSBC, saying it was a commercial reality and getting the mast there would have been a logistical nightmare.

"Deep in our hearts, we knew that was going to be the answer."

Hexagon is under tow to Puerto Madryn on the River Plate, where ground crew David Petersen is waiting.

Robbie Dalton said the best hope now was finding another mast and using Kiwi ingenuity to fix it into Hexagon. They were not looking for another sponsor and HSBC was still supporting them in other ways.

"Things were being done overnight to see if there was an alternative -- Graham is still out there fighting."

Dalton's famous yachting brother Grant said there would be huge problems trying to find another mast, particularly in South America where they would encounter language problems.

Whatever they found would not fit anywhere near the footprint of the old mast and jury masts had a habit of falling down, he said.

"There is still a bloody long way to go... it would take a lot of money and Kiwi ingenuity to doctor in a rig and get Hexagon moving again.

"I am sure that is how Graham will be thinking now, but the question is whether it is practical.

"I would not imagine he is feeling that flash right now. You don't have to be a yachtie to imagine he will be feeling pretty upset," Grant Dalton said.

Dalton finished leg one in seventh position, was fourth after leg two and arrived in Tauranga at the end of leg three in third position.

But his problems began when crossing the Atlantic from Britain to the start and his mast snapped.

By the time he made the September 15 start he had a time penalty of 61 hours after missing race qualifying and yacht scrutineering deadlines in Newport, Rhode Island.

Further problems happened the following month when his mainsail fell as Hexagon battled unforecast strong winds -- and the boat slipped back to seventh.

Autopilot problems followed and in January as he approached Tauranga for the third leg stopover he suffered communications failure, leaving him to ultimately rely on the "Sat C" system for position but nothing else.