A passionate yachtsman was ecstatic and overwhelmed yesterday by the kindness he found from local boaters who helped him salvage his 50-foot capsized yacht on the third attempt.

Tim Kent, the owner of the Everest Horizontal, was amazed that strangers would risk so much to help him recover the yacht, which capsized ten days ago more than 100 miles off the Island.

Mr. Kent, 50, who had not long finished the Around Alone race, was on the second leg of the Bermuda One-Two Race to Newport, Rhode Island with Richard McKenna when their keel broke off in fine weather.

The pair survived the dramatic turnover and were rescued one hour later by the cruise ship Nordic Empress which took them on to New York.

Mr. Kent returned to the Island a few days later to find help. “I had to find her,” he said. “We went on an Around Alone race together and had gone through some of the most treacherous seas together,” said Mr. Kent. “There was no way that I could leave her out there.”

Mr. Kent had been out on two previous salvage missions, and the third attempt led to the rediscovery of the Everest Horizontal. She was found 110 miles north of the Island - five miles further south of where she first overturned. The crew on the Tenacious arrived yesterday at 8 a.m. after leaving the Island on Tuesday night at around 10 p.m.

Earlier, fellow Around Alone sailor Bermudian Alan Paris arranged for the Evening Star, a fishing boat, to search for the missing yacht, but had little success.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kent met Steve Hollis, the owner of Ocean Sails in St. George's, who, after only meeting him once, decided to help. Mr. Kent said: “Steve made a few calls and arranged everything. I came in at 3 p.m. and by 8 p.m. everyone was assembled on the dock.

“Steve had organised a diver, a man with a pump, the Tenacious, a fishing boat, charts, and a few other people. Mr. Hollis said: “We had charts and decided to check around - the yacht had floated further south and we estimated where she might have floated. “On the way there we had discussed every possible scenario - so when we found her we went into automatic,” said Mr. Hollis.

“The yacht was spotted by Sloan Wakefield, the skipper of the Tenacious,at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, but from the moment of boarding it took about six hours. When we were pumping out all of the water and clearing all of the debris we found a tea pot floating in the boat,” he said. The other crew members were Tom Wadson, Godfrey Simpson, Paul Lavigne and Alan Paris, although he was not present, loaned them his satellite phone, which allowed them to keep in touch with Harbour Radio.

He added: “My daughter Whitney wrote on the boat - Remember the difference between an adventure and an ordeal is attitude - now that was a very wise thing to come out of a ten year old.”