Volvo Ocean Race Yacht Involved in Fatal Accident Near Hong Kong

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HONG KONG — A sailboat competing in the Volvo Ocean Race, a marquee around-the-world sailing competition, collided with a Chinese fishing vessel near Hong Kong early Saturday, killing one of the Chinese boat’s crew members, race organizers and Chinese state media said.

The Vestas 11th Hour Racing boat hit the fishing vessel around 1:20 a.m. local time. The crew alerted the Hong Kong authorities and race officials immediately after the collision. The Hong Kong Marine Rescue Coordination Center said that nine of the fishing boat’s crew members were rescued. A tenth who was taken by helicopter to a hospital, however, later died, race officials said.

The dead sailor was from mainland China, according to the English-language Twitter account of the People’s Daily, the Communist Party-run newspaper.

“On behalf of the Volvo Ocean Race and Vestas 11th Hour Racing, we offer our deepest condolences to the loved ones of the deceased,” the team and race officials said in a statement.

No members of the American-Danish racing team were injured.

The Volvo Ocean Race is one of the world’s most famous, and most extreme, sailing competitions. Started in 1973 as the Whitbread, it is held once every three years, and teams race nonstop during a set of 10 legs. The latest edition began Oct. 22 in Alicante, Spain, and is scheduled to finish in June at The Hague.

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Saturday’s collision occurred about 30 miles from the finish of the fourth leg of the race, in the busy waters of the South China Sea. The 5,600-mile segment from Melbourne, Australia, to Hong Kong began on Jan. 2.

The Vestas 11th Hour Racing boat suffered damage and retired from the leg after the collision, but was able to motor to Hong Kong on its own. Members of the Vestas team did not immediately return requests for comment on Saturday.

A photograph of the racing boat published on the website of Oriental Daily News, a Hong Kong newspaper, showed a long gouge along its port bow.

Despite the challenging nature of the race, fatalities during the competition are rare, and sailing experts could not recall a previous death of a nonparticipant in a collision with a racing boat. Three sailors were swept overboard and died in the inaugural 1973-74 race, and the Dutch sailor Hans Horrevoets was killed in 2006 after falling overboard in the North Atlantic.

The Vestas 11th Hour Racing team had been in a fight with the Dongfeng Race Team of China for second place when it hit the fishing boat. By the end of the fourth leg, it was third among seven teams, with the Mapfre team of Spain in the overall lead.

Hong Kong was hosting the race for the first time, and the Melbourne-Hong Kong leg was won by a local team, Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag. It lost time recovering a crew member swept overboard, but gained an advantage on rivals by taking a more westerly route that other teams avoided for fear of missing strong winds from the northeast.