Competitive sailor John Fildes travelled a long way to meet a neighbour — losing his racing yacht, and almost his life, in the process.

Fildes was sailing his 40-foot trimaran to Newport, Rhode Island, when a storm collapsed his sails and swamped his engine near Bermuda.

As he drifted in the Atlantic, a passing cruise ship responded to his distress call and took him aboard.

The next morning he met the Crown Princess's captain, Alistair Clark, and the men discovered they live within one mile of each other in the coastal English village of Warsash, Hampshire.

"The whole thing was probably fate," Fildes told The Associated Press on Thursday. "He was there and I was there, and there was absolutely nobody else."

Fildes, 32, set out from St. Maarten on May 9 and ran into trouble during violent weather the night before his Monday rescue.

He had planned to enter the yacht, Dangerous When We>, in a race between Newport and Bermuda, but the vessel has probably been lost at sea.

Fildes said he had never met the captain before, but he left a thank-you note inviting him to dinner in Warsash.

Captain Clark of the Crown Princess opted to bypass Bermuda during the heavy winds and took Mr. Fildes to New York.