WA: Sailor's injuries made rescue all the more difficult: RFDS

AAP General News (Australia)
12-21-2008
WA: Sailor's injuries made rescue all the more difficult: RFDS

PERTH, Dec 21 AAP - The Australian navy has tackled extremely difficult circumstances
to pluck French sailor Yann Elies from his yacht 1,200km south of Perth, the Royal Flying
Doctor Service (RFDS) says.

The yachtsman broke his left thighbone during the Vendee Globe round-the-world race
on Thursday night and was rescued by an Australian navy frigate which left HMAS Stirling
navy base, south of Perth, on a special mission on Friday.

Elies had not had any pain relief for 48 hours until RFDS medico David McIlroy and
officers from HMAS Arunta boarded his yacht on Saturday.

RFDS medical director Stephen Langford on Sunday said Dr McIlroy had described the
rescue as "probably the most exciting but also most physically demanding rescue he's ever
done".

"The thing that's different to this rescue compared to (the rescues of sailors) Isabelle
Autissier and Tony Bullimore and those guys is that they were effectively ... fully abled
sailors who were being rescued from vessels that had broken," Dr Langford told AAP on
Sunday.

"Whereas in this case you're actually trying to take someone off who is ... seriously
injured and are unable to help clamber off the boat themselves and that made it all the
more difficult."

The Vendee Globe website said Elies was diagnosed with a fractured left femur and several
broken ribs.

"In those sorts of conditions, really cramped, the boat banging around and he was trying
to put in an anesthetic block to block the nerves in the yachtsman's leg to take away
some of the pain, and then put some IV fluids in and some other pain relief," Dr Langford
said.

"They ... managed to splint his leg and get him in to a rescue stretcher and then had
to transfer that stretcher across from the yacht to the inflatable boats with lines on
each end.

"That's a difficult sort of thing."

Network Ten reported on Sunday that the Arunta was due to dock in Fremantle on Monday.

A Defence Department spokesman said on Saturday night that Elies was in a serious but
stable condition.

"He is very tired after the past 48 hours, but has been able to ring his wife," Dr
McIlroy and medical officer William Bee were quoted as saying on the Vendee Globe website.

AAP jp/srp/cdh

KEYWORD: SAIL GLOBE RFDS

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