Two American sailors drifted for five days in a storm-battered yacht before being rescued by the US Navy off Bermuda.

The pair had floated more than 200 miles without engines or a main mast on their sloop Glou Glou when they finally fired distress signals on Saturday afternoon.

Their 33-foot yacht had sailed for Bermuda from Nantucket, Massachusetts on October 14.

And it had drifted to within 40 miles of the Island when the guided missile cruiser USS Thomas S. Gates answered the call for help.

Two Navy officers tried to board the yacht but found conditions too treacherous -- 40 miles northwest of Bermuda.

So the warship had to pull right alongside the sloop to complete the rescue.

The yachtsmen - Capt. David Dietz, 32, and shipmate Eric Humphreys, 24, had rigged up a makeshift sail on their way to Bermuda.

"It was pretty damned much like hell,'' said Capt. Dietz, who said he had almost given up hope until he spotted a US Navy S-3 anti-submarine aircraft, sent from the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy .

But he lived to relay his ordeal to Navy captain Paul Rosbolt after being hauled aboard the Gates .

He said seas up to 50 feet tossed the vessel violently, at one point rolling it 360 degrees.

Supplies and gear were lost, drinking water was contaminated, debris punched holes in the boat and the mast snapped off.

"We got the engine running for a while, and that got us 30 to 40 miles,'' said Capt. Dietz.

"But the wind shifted and came so hard out of the south that there was no way with our handmade rig that we could make it,'' he said in a satellite telephone interview with the Norfolk Virginian Pilot on Saturday night.

But he insisted he was ready to set straight out again on the open seas.

"I've got 1,186 days off shore, not including this trip,'' he said. "I've done it for years, and I'll keep doing it.'' Capt. Rosbolt, 40, told how the USS Thomas S. Gates had just left Bermudian shores when she picked up the distress signal at around 4 p.m. on Saturday.

She was part of the JFK Battlegroup - a fleet of 11 warships - which had been on patrol in the Mediterranean for the past six months.

The cruiser was only in Bermuda to take part in Operation Tiger Cruise, with 700 relatives of US Navy crew flying onto the Island to sail back to America with the warships.

And the Navy captain praised Capt. Dietz for keeping the yacht afloat.

"He did a heck of a job,'' he said. "To have taken the kind of roll he did and still jury-rig something and get that close to Bermuda is commendable. I would not have been a happy camper on that thing.'' The Gates launched a small inflatable boat -- into 35 mph winds and seas rolling at 10 feet -- to retrieve the sailors.

But the rescue mission proved too dangerous until the 567-foot ship pulled alongside.

"It was pretty hairy at first,'' said Senior Chief Ray Perry, one of two aboard the rescue craft.

"We tried to go alongside, but we decided it was too dangerous to try and get them on board.'' Fellow crewman Michael Marsden added. "Their boat looked like it had been through a lot.'' Dietz and Humphreys are due to arrive in Norfolk, Virginia, aboard the warship later today.

A spokesman for Bermuda Harbour Radio said: "Calling for help was certainly the best option and the USS Thomas S. Gates reached them within two hours of the distress call.'' The pair had been due to stop in Bermuda before heading on to St.

Bartholomew's in the French West Indies, where the yacht's millionaire owner is based.

But the Glou Glou has now been left to drift on the open sea and Harbour Radio have contacted ship captains to ask for reports.

She was tracked 38.9 miles north west of Gibbs Hill lighthouse at 9.25 p.m. on Saturday, three hours after the Navy rescue.

The Harbour Radio spokesman added: "The sailors on the Glou Glou were very lucky that the battlegroup was nearby.

"It is quite incredible to think that the yacht had been dismasted on Monday, 250 miles from Bermuda. By Saturday, they felt they had no option other than to indicate their emergency postion.

"They would undoubtedly have run into more trouble.''