A crew member on the first yacht to reach Bermuda from the north this winter has spoken of the catalogue of near disasters that almost sank the vessel in turbulent seas between the north east coast of the US and Bermuda.

Thelimped into St. George?s Harbour without its main mast, a usable second mizzen mast and the engine being fed fuel through a make-shift set up with jerry cans and a hose pipe from the deck.

The captain of the 43-foot Tanton yacht was rushed to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for intensive care after falling ill during the journey from Connecticut. Setting out from Greenwich the six-strong crew ran into problems almost immediately when the yacht?s auto-pilot system started to fail.

But once the twin-masted yacht reached the open seas of the North Atlantic, heading for the Caribbean, things turned from bad to worse.

The boom of the rear mizzen sail broke twice and the main sail collapsed after the upper support snapped. As one thing broke the crew were able to switch to another form of propulsion, but after losing the main sail the crew switched on the engine only for it to choke and stall within a minute because of dirt in the filters.

For the next six hours the yacht drifted without sail or engine, tossed on squally seas with waves 15 to 20ft high.

Crew member Michael Wolter, from Canada, said: ?It wasn?t how big the waves were that was the problem, it was because they were coming from so many different directions. There was no pattern to them.?

Eventually the crew rigged up a clean fuel line to the engine using a hose pipe and jerry cans filled with diesel on the deck. But then came the most dangerous moment as the 58ft main mast ?un-stepped? breaking free from its housing attached to the hull and started to rotate back and forth beneath deck with a metal retaining plate still attached to the bottom.

The unrestrained mast started to whip around, the metal plate shredding through anchor ropes in the hull area. If the rope had not been left in that area it was probable the mast and plate would have holed the bottom of the boat, according to Mr. Wolter.

Then the mast snapped in two and fell overboard.

?Thank God it broke off because it was whipping around in the squalls,? said Mr. Wolter.

But with the danger of the boat being holed now gone the mast caused more havoc as one of the ropes still attached to it fouled the propeller bringing the yacht to a halt once more.

Fortunately the crew had been able to carry out a repair to the rear mizzen sail and used this to continue heading for Bermuda until the mizzen boom broke a second time.

?Then we had three hours of sunshine and warm water and were able to dive down and free the propeller from the entanglement,? said Mr. Wolter.

Using a satellite phone the crew stayed in contact with Bermuda Harbour Radio as concern grew for the captain who had fallen ill during the seven-day journey. With its main mast lost and the boom of the rear mast now twice broken and beyond further repair the continued on its journey to Bermuda using the makeshift jerry can fuel line arrangement to the engine. She reached safe haven in St. George?s Harbour and tied up at Ordnance Island allow the sick captain to be taken by ambulance to KEMH.

The yacht is likely to be stuck in Bermuda for many months while a replacement carbon fibre mast is either made or purchased.

The five-man and one-woman crew have spent the last few days recovering from their ordeal and enjoying a rest in Bermuda before most of them return to North America by air.

Mr. Wolter said: ?We are glad that the captain is pulling through. We had a bunch of mishaps that accumulated on each other.?