From today's conference call from Abu Dhabi:

Skipper Chris Nicholson opened by outlining what happened in the 48-hour period prior to the grounding off Team Vestas Wind's on the Cargados Carajos Shoals, some 200 miles north-east of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean

'We were aware that there would be some sea-mounts. When I saw those, I asked what the depth and current and wave conditions would be.

My experience with those off the east coast of Australia is that conditions can get quite bumpy with a difficult wave state.. Wouter’s reply was that the depth went from 3000 metres to 40 metres – that were the extremes of the depths.

'The current was negligible, and we would monitor the wave state, as we approached,' Nicholson said.

'A 40 metre depth is perfectly safe depth at which to cross seamounts or any piece of terrain', Nicholson added.

'That information as relayed to the crew, so they were informed as to the conditions.'

'In hindsight we would have zoomed in much more on the actual area,' said navigator Wouter Verbraak. 'We have not yet managed to get the computers up and running, they are pretty much dead. But we would like to do this, so we know what has happened.

'We had passed during the days, over several seamounts,' Verbraak explained. 'The wave were quite big due to the tropical storms. But we didn’t have any problems with the seamounts. Wave conditions were forecasted to diminish. As such 40 metres was a safe depth to pass over the seamounts.

In response to a question as to whether the crew was in any danger, Nicholson said they were certainly in danger from the time the 65ft yacht hit the atoll.

'We went instantly into an 180-degree turn. In the force of the impact, our rudders broke off. In the instantaneous turn, our dagger board snapped off. We were completely stuck with breaking waves.

'My initial look over the side of the boat was jagged rocks and breaking waves. At that stage, I didn’t even know there was a safe haven as such in the lagoon, some distance away.

'My initial thoughts were obviously for the worst. We had to inform Race Headquarters. There were 100 jobs going on at the one time', he explained, such as securing bulkhead watertight doors, getting survival suits, the liferafts and the AIS personal beacons.'

'There was so much going on but the one thing that shone out was the entire crew handled the situation with composure.'

'My one thought was that we had to get the boat under control - we had sails still hoisted. It was an amazingly stressful time, but we need to back up and remember that this was bought about by a simple human error.'

'At the end of the day we didn’t look at the chart and we didn’t zoom in enough.'

'But after that it all went well.'