An 82-year-old sailor is heading back to land after a prolonged rescue operation involving the UK and Norwegian coastguard.
Weather conditions had been hampering the rescue of solo yachtsman Julian Mustoe, whose stricken vessel started drifting towards a gas platform in the North Sea on Tuesday evening.
Earlier today he refused to be airlifted by a helicopter because he did not want to abandon his yacht, Harrier of Down.
He has now boarded a Norwegian Coastguard cutter and is being taken to Bergen with his yacht in tow.
Mr Mustoe raised the alarm at about 8.50pm on Tuesday when his vessel suffered a mechanical failure in extreme weather conditions, with 23ft (7m) waves and gale-force winds, around 95 nautical miles from Lerwick in Shetland and 86 nautical miles from Norway.
The mechanical failure left him unable to steer and his 25ft (7.6m) yacht began drifting towards Total's gas platform Alwyn North with 162 people on board. They also put out a distress call but the yacht did not collide with the platform.
A Total spokesman said: "Last night a small yacht was reported to be drifting within a half mile of Total's Alwyn North platform.
"The Coastguard and Alwyn North's emergency response vessel (ERV) offered support to the yacht. At all times the situation was closely monitored and under control by both the coastguard and the ERV."
The stand-by vessel Vos Prospector, from the Dunbar gas field, had contacted Shetland Coastguard after picking up Mr Mustoe's call for help and a rescue operation was launched.
Vos Prospector tried to attach a tow line to the Harrier of Down but could not because of the weather.
Mr Mustoe is thought to have been travelling from Shetland to Bergen when he got into difficulty. The Englishman has written a book titled Voyage Of The Harrier, about his circumnavigation of the world between 2001 and 2012, retracing Charles Darwin's journey in HMS Beagle.
According to Mr Mustoe's website, he planned to set off for the Baltic Sea in the summer, to conduct another historically-informed cruise based on the territory and activities of the medieval Hanseatic League.
A UK Coastguard spokeswoman said: "The man who was left drifting in the North Sea after his yacht lost its steering is now on board a Norwegian Coastguard cutter.
"The UK Coastguard has been working with its counterparts in Norway to help the man who was stuck in challenging weather conditions.
"It's now planned to take him and his yacht - under tow - back to Bergen which is expected to take some hours as it is a prolonged process."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here