AFP - An Australian navy frigate Saturday reached a French yachtsman badly injured during a solo round-the-world race and was preparing to evacuate him, the race director told the BBC.
   
The Australian navy frigate HMAS Arunta, carrying a doctor from the famed Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), had arrived alongside Yann Elies and would try to transfer him from his 60-foot (18-metre) yacht Generali, race director Julian Hocken said.
   
Elies, 34, was unable to move freely after breaking his thighbone in the remote Southern Ocean.
   
Hocken said there was no need to airlift Elies to hospital as the frigate was fully equipped for medical emergencies.
   
"The warship is fully fitted out for medical care and for injuries of this level of severity. Yann will stay on the warship as it heads back to Fremantle, back to its home port," Hocken told the BBC.
   
He said Elies had "held up pretty well" over the past two days since his accident.
   
Hocken said the weather conditions had greatly improved in the hostile Southern Ocean which would help the rescue effort.
   
"The wind gods are smiling on us because there's a little weather window which we'll have for maybe two or three hours.
   
"The sea has flattened out considerably from the three or four metre swells they've had for the last 48 hours. There's a blue sky, the sun is shining and the wind has dropped right down to a very manageable 14 knots," Hocken said.
   
Elies was forced to abandon the Vendee Globe round-the-world yacht race on Thursday while in eighth place aboard Generali in the Southern Ocean about 800 nautical miles south of the Australian coast.
   
He managed to drag himself into the cabin and activate the yacht's autopilot after breaking his leg in a fall when a huge wave slammed into the vessel as he was changing a sail.
   
Thirty yachts began the gruelling round-the-world classic, which is held every four years, from the French Atlantic port of Les Sables d'Olonne on November 9, but 12 have now abandoned the race.