Golden Globe Race rescue: Tapio Lehtinen found in the Southern Indian Ocean

Following the flooding and sinking of his yacht Asteria on Friday (18 November), Finnish Tapio Lehtinen was successfully rescued around 24 hours later. He’d activated his liferaft’s Personal Locator Beacon at 0854 UTC and since the emergency signal transmitter is packed inside the sailboat’s liferaft and has to be activated manually, the race organisers and Lehtinen’s team understood that it was a serious emergency.

Lehtinen reported his Gaia 36 had flooded from the stern, with water up to deck level in five minutes, and then sank.

Kirsten Neuschäfer aboard Minnehaha was the closest to Lehtinen (105 miles). She contacted the GGR crisis team and broke the seal of the emergency GPS and diverted her course towards his position.

Posting speeds above seven knots, Neuschäfer was the first on site at 0510 UTC (19 November). The conditions at the time were 20 knots of SSE wind, two to three metre swell and daylight.

Although Lehtinen had an early visual on Neuschäfer’s yacht she could not see the liferaft in the swell. She could hear him on the VHF, but Lehtinen could not hear her voice. The GGR crisis management team managed Neuschäfer’s position until they were close enough to see and hear each other.

Neuschäfer retrieved Lehtinen from the liferaft onto Minnehaha with a retrieving line. They shared a glass of rum. Lehtinen went back in the raft and was then pulled towards the M.V. Darya Gayatri, which Lehtinen then successfully boarded (along with his raft).

“I’m full of adrenaline now,” Neuschäfer told GGR. “I’ve been up helming all night, and it’s quite something to be manoeuvring so close to a ship, but we’re all good. He was on board, we drank a rum together and then we sent him on his merry way. . . No congratulations needed for the rescue, everyone would do the same for another sailor, thank you guys for coordinating it.”

“You can’t get any closer to the ocean, I love it but this is close enough. Thanks for looking after of me,” says Lethinen.

Lethinen’s statement following Golden Globe Race rescue

“Thank you once again everybody involved in my flawless rescue operation after the sinking of Asteria.

“The accident was a devastating surprise, I had 100 per cent confidence for Asteria being fit for fight, the boat performed beautifully and I was very happy and proud of her. After a total rebuild four years ago and being fitted out and inspected again this year, being flooded up to deck level in five minutes and sinking twenty minutes later in beautiful summer conditions is beyond my comprehension.

“But the rock solid professionalism of Don McIntyre in coordinating the rescue operation together with MRCCs in Cape Town and Singapore, Kirsten Neuschafer, Abilash Tomy and m/v Darya Gayatri captain Naveen Kumar Mehrotra came as no surprise to me. On the contrary, already before the start of the race, at a safety briefing in Les Sables d’Olonne, I told my competitors that if we’d get into trouble, we would be in the best of hands, I only never imagined that I would be the one.

“Thank you Don – getting into the raft in a rush without my grab bags of food, medicine and water, I knew that it wouldn’t be a long stay. And it wasn’t. I felt safe through the 24+ hrs on the raft.

“Thank you also Kirsten for your excellent seamanship in manoeuvring Minnehaha next to the raft, getting me onboard and for the rum😊. And then in cooperation with captain Naveen Kumar Mehrotra, getting Minnehaha safely in the lee of m/v Darya Garyatri and getting me safely onboard the ship where I am now very happily enjoying the Indian hospitality of the captain and crew.

“Thank you also everybody for the regards, sympathy and support through your messages and excuse me for the anxiety I have caused.

“As said, the disappointment is massive. I re-entered the race as I thought that Asteria deserved another chance – she was capable for a podium finish in the race. We were doing well and I was very much looking forward to the roughly hundred days of solitude in the Southern Ocean and a good race with Simon, Kirsten, Abilash, Michael and the rest.

“But life goes on.”

“The wait between the emergency signal and the first text message was unnerving,” says Lethinen’s daughter Silja Frost. “When something was clearly very wrong, it seemed likely that the Asteria might have sunk. It was unclear what Tapio’s situation was, so we all had to prepare for bad news as well. The relief was huge when the first message from Tapio finally arrived. After that, we trusted that everything would be alright. However, the weather was moderate, my racing friends Kirsten and Tomy and the nearest ship relatively close. Tapio has a lot of experience and nerves of steel. His ability to adapt to any situation is top notch.

“The absurdity of the situation materialised in a dramatic way. When I heard about what happened on Friday morning from my brother on the phone, I started walking to the subway to get to Tapio’s mother. At the same time, in the tunnel of the University of Helsinki, someone played the Titanic theme song on the cello. The situation felt completely crazy, so My Heart Will Go On even laughed in the middle of it. Fortunately, this story has a happier ending.”

This is the second major misfortune to befall a participant in this edition of the Golden Globe Race. In September (2022), Guy deBoer (USA) literally crashed out of the race after hitting rocks at night on the north coast of Fuerteventura, Las Palmas in the Canaries.