'I'm doing all right' says sailor who crashed into reef
The sailor whose yacht crashed into a reef during a round-the-world race said he was 'battered and bruised but doing all right'.
Alan Moss told his dad Barrie during a phone call home that all his personal possessions had been lost in the accident.
The 40-year-old, from Fareham, was the last to leave the stricken Cork Clipper alongside its skipper as they battled to retrieve its emergency lighting.
The Gosport-based yacht hit a submerged reef in the Java Sea, Indonesia, about 4am on Thursday, local time, forcing the 16 member international crew to abandon ship in life rafts and head to a nearby island.
Barrie Moss, 64, from Plymouth, told The News: 'I've only had the chance to have one very brief phone call with Alan but then we lost contact.
'He said he's battered and bruised but he's doing all right. He's got a sore neck from being thrown about but nothing major.
'All he's got left is one pair of trousers and a t-shirt - he said everything else on the boat has probably been ransacked by the local fishermen by now.
'They've lost all their equipment.
'The boat is still stuck there and the starboard side is two feet below the surface with breakers crashing over the top of it.'
But Mr Moss said the incident wouldn't faze his son, who was also in the RAF and has served in Iraq.
'He would definitely cope with this,' he added. 'You don't go on this sort of thing without expecting to get in a few scrapes. He's very resilient.'
Alan Moss, a father-of-one, left the RAF more than a decade ago and has been working as an air traffic controller for about 10 years.
He left his job at Swanwick to take part in the Clipper Around the World race, which started from Humber last September.
Barrie Moss said: 'He didn't really have any sailing experience before this, other than a bit of local stuff with myself years ago.'
Alan is now onboard California, one of the yachts that came to Cork's aid, which is heading on towards the end of this leg in Singapore - still about two days away.
But progress has been slow as the nine remaining yachts have been battered by monsoon squalls.
>> Vote in our latest web poll.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Portsmouth
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 13 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 13 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 24 mph
Wind direction: East
