Suffolk travel agency owner, Bridget Keevil, has had to retire from the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race due to injury.
Keevil was on the deck of the Da Nang yacht, which was on the sixth leg of eight between Vietnam and the US, when the vessel nearly capsized in 45-knot winds earlier this month.
Writing on her The Fat Bird & The Boat blog from Seattle on Wednesday, Keevil, who has been raising money for Abta Lifeline, told her readers that medics have told her she cannot go on. She had been due to arrive back in London on July 22.
She has chipped her humerus in two place and has a fracture. She has also torn her rotator cuff and will need an operation to repair it. Her shoulder needs to be immobile for six to eight weeks.
“My time in Seattle has not been as I would have liked it to be,” she said.
“The catastrophic news is that I am not fit to carry on with the race. I am absolutely devastated.
“Right from the start, it was the whole circumnavigation or nothing. Doing six legs of the eight is not what I set out to do.”
Writing about her diagnosis she said: “That brought me back down to earth with a bump. If anything, I thought I may have had a bleed in my head as I hit it so hard, or my legs might have had something worse wrong with them, either of which may have stopped me from sailing on Thursday.
“I really didn’t think that my arm was broken. Unfortunately, there was no grey area – I was not able to get back on the boat whatever I did between then and when we left.
“For the last eight months I have been battling both mentally and physically with a challenge that I knew I would struggle with.
“I thought I was winning. I thought if I could get to the USA I would be able to make it back to London.
“Now my challenge has come to an end. I am going home. But I am not ready to go home.
“However long I sat and imagined I was at home on those long, lonely night shifts, now is not the time to go.”
Keevil has raised £3,803 of her £5,000 target. To donate, visit justgiving.com/bridgetkeevil.