A sailor died and two others are in hospital after being forced to cling to their capsized boat for up to nine hours as 30-feet waves battered them in a ferocious storm.

The survivors were dramatically rescued by US Coast Guard crews, who winched them to safety in pitch darkness amid 40-knot winds, about 200 miles east of Bermuda, in the early hours of yesterday.

The man who died ? the ship?s British skipper, who was in his 50s ? is thought to have unfastened his life jacket after growing delirious through hypothermia. His friends clung onto his body after he died before it slipped from their grasp and was washed away to sea in the storm.

The pair, a 33-year-old American and 37-year-old Briton, are currently recovering from hypothermia in the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. Their condition was last night described as stable.

The sailors raised the alarm shortly after 5 p.m. on Monday when their 37-feet catamaran capsized.

About three hours later, a C-130 rescue aircraft from Air Station Elizabeth City, in North Carolina, arrived at the scene. Crew members found the boat upside down with the two survivors fastened to it with their life jackets.

In horrendous conditions, they were unable to reach the victims with a life raft, meaning they had to wait several more hours for the arrival of a helicopter with winching equipment.

The helicopter, which also flew from North Carolina, finally reached at about 1 a.m., having called at Bermuda for refuelling. It was accompanied by another C-130 aircraft, which acted as an escort.

Helicopter crew member Michael Ackermann swam to the catamaran, collected one of the men and hauled him to safety in a steel basket which was attached to the aircraft.

He then swam back to the boat to collect the other man in the same manner.

The helicopter carried the survivors ? who were hypothermic and extremely fatigued ? back to Bermuda, arriving at the Island at about 5.20 a.m. They were rushed to hospital in an ambulance waiting at Bermuda International Airport.

Teams continued to hunt for the body of the dead man for most of yesterday, but the search was called off at sunset.

Lieutenant Commander Adam Kerr said the sailors suffered an horrific ordeal.

?They were so beaten down,? he said. ?You could just see it by looking at them. They looked like they had been beaten on, just fatigued.

?Imagine what it?s like to be seasick, and also getting pummelled by waves as high as a two or three storey building for seven, eight or nine hours. They were getting pounded repeatedly. They would have been thinking they were going to die. It was dark out there, it was stormy, they were 200 miles away from any part of land.

?If you are not in the ocean as much as we are, and see the things we see, it?s a very dangerous place to be. It can go from very tranquil to very nasty in a short period of time. That?s probably what happened to them.?

Swimmer Mr. Ackermann, an aviation survival technician, said his first task on reaching the men was to check their health and enquire about the their missing friend. ?They were pretty happy to see me,? he said. ?You could tell that they were tired ? they had been there quite a long time. The seas were pretty big. I told them to remain calm.

?I asked them about the third man and they confirmed he had succumbed to hypothermia and become delirious.

?He had a life preservation device, but they said he undid it ? in later stages of hypothermia you can start feeling really hot. They weren?t able to clip him back on. He became unconscious for some time. They checked his pulse and he had succumbed. A big wave hit him and took him away. They tried to get him back but they couldn?t.?

After Mr. Ackermann lifted the men to safety, flight mechanic Tom Romero continued their aid. ?They were hypothermic,? said Mr. Romero. ?Some of their body parts were a little cold. We wrapped them up in blankets and made sure they were OK. We gave them a bunch of water and some crackers and cranked up the heat in the helicopter.?

Coast Guard members say the men would have stood no chance of surviving if they had not been equipped with ?EPIRB? beacons, which instantly notified the team via satellite of their exact location.

Lieutenant Peter Evonuk, pilot of the C-130 which first reached the scene, said: ?Those EPIRBS saved their lives. The searching is the hard part of our job. If we know where you are, we will find you. We flew right to these guys because of their EPIRBS. If you are a sailor, have an EPIRB.?

Coast Guard members and staff at Bermuda Radio, who helped co-ordinate the mission, won praise for their heroics.

US Consul General Gregory Slayton said: ? I want to offer my personal thanks to the brave men and women of the US Coast Guard who put their lives at risk to help others, the exemplary Bermuda Radio team that keeps mariners safe, and those at the airport who did their part by opening the airport after hours so that the helicopters could refuel. As a team great things are possible.?

A Bermuda Radio spokesman said: ?Those two guys are very lucky to be alive.?

The vessel was reported to be on a voyage from La Sable in France via the Portuguese island Madeira, to Annapolis Maryland.