Search Begun for French Solo Sailor

Australian authorities have launched an air-sea search for Jacques de Roux, 49, a competitor missing in the single-handed around-the-world sailboat race.

The search began at dawn Saturday (Australian time) after De Roux’s boat, the 50-foot Skoiern IV, was found adrift, its sails set but flapping uselessly, off the southeast Australian coast.

Rescuers boarded the boat but found no one, and the presumption was that De Roux, of France, had fallen overboard and probably drowned.

De Roux last reported his position by radio Thursday evening. At that time he said he was was five miles off Green Point, on the southeast coast, and about 240 miles from Sydney, where the second leg of the race ends.

Subsequent position reports by satellite indicated that Skoiern was drifting south with the current. BOC race headquarters in Sydney dispatched a plane that spotted the apparently unmanned craft adrift at noon Friday.

The search began with planes crisscrossing a 600-square-mile area at 500 feet. A helicopter was standing by at a nearby shore station ready to respond to any sighting. Seas were calm, but a gale was forecast.

Observers at race headquarters here and elsewhere doubted that De Roux would have been wearing a life preserver. Preservers are not usually worn by single-handed sailors, who rely generally on lifelines. It is not unusual, however, for solo sailors to be on deck without their harness and lifeline attached.

There was speculation that De Roux was exhausted by two harrowing weeks of gales in which his boat was rolled over twice. One rollover stripped his boat of its steering apparatus, and De Roux had been forced to hand-steer with an emergency tiller for up to 20 hours a day.

Other competitors, in touch with him by radio, reported that the Frenchman was determined to hold his first-place position in Class 2 for boats up to 50 feet in length.

De Roux, a former nuclear submarine executive officer in the French Navy, was one of the most skilled and respected sailors in the race.

He had a narrow escape from death in the first BOC Challenge when his 41-foot boat, Skoiern III, rolled and was dismasted in the Pacific in February 1983. He bailed for almost 40 hours to keep his badly holed boat afloat while fellow competitor Richard Broadhead of England sailed more than 300 nautical miles to his rescue.