Irish rowers are rescued from Atlantic

Rowing:  Two Irish oarsmen competing in the Atlantic Rowing Race were rescued from heavy seas last night by a Spanish-flagged supertanker. The pair's boat, the Digicel Atlantic Challenge, was located overturned and the crew were then found in a life-raft.

Gearóid Towey (28) and Ciarán Lewis (34) had sent out a distress signal at 5.35pm which was picked up at US Coast Guard base in Norfolk, Virginia.

The tanker was asked to head for the area by the coast guard and found the men, alive, at approximately 10 o'clock last night. "That's brilliant," said Towey's father, Gerry, last night. "I'm so relieved." He said that the boat's rudder had broken the night before and the crew would not have abandoned the race unless something had gone seriously wrong.

Towey, an Olympic oarsman and former world champion, and Lewis have been competing in the race from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean. Yesterday's distress signal had been sent from approximately 1,400 nautical miles south-east of Bermuda. Coast guard aircraft from San Juan and a boat from Clearwater were on standby.

The organisers of the race, Woodvale Events, said last night that their support yacht was approximately 115 nautical miles from the Irish vessel and could not be the first vessel there.

Towey and Lewis set off from La Gomera in the Canaries on November 30th with the aim of reaching Antigua in the Caribbean as the fastest of the 20 pairs in the Atlantic Rowing Race.

The last position logged on the website of the race for the Irish craft put them 1,636 miles into the 2,931-mile race.

Bad weather had hampered the event, and Towey and Lewis had faded back in the rankings, but the crew had been making good progress in recent days, covering 70 miles on Friday, their best mileage so far. However, they were again hampered in recent days by the weather.

"I spoke to them at 4.30 today," said Donal Hanrahan of their support team last night.

"They had a broken rudder and couldn't fix it in the big seas. They were a bit cheesed off, but they were fine." The crew are raising money for Concern and the Merchant's Quay Project.

Towey (28) has been one of Ireland's top rowers for a decade. At the senior world championships, the Corkman won a gold medal in 2001 and bronze in 1999 and 2003.