ALEX THOMSON must be wondering what he has done to offend the gods of the sea. There were four or five state-of-the-art racing boats outside the harbour of Les Sables d’Olonne in the early hours of the morning, yet the 60ft French trawler unerringly picked out his boat to ram.

One moment Thomson was sleeping peacefully below deck, waiting to take his Hugo Boss Open 60 into port for the start of the Vendee Globe, the ultimate solo round-the-world race, the next he was leaping onto the deck to survey the wreckage of his dreams. Even now, 10 days on, he is struggling to come to terms with the reality that Hugo Boss needs a “small miracle” to be ready in time for the start of the race on November 9. “If the trawler had hit us two metres further back, somebody could have been killed or seriously maimed,” he says. “Nobody did it on purpose, so there’s no point in getting bitter and twisted about it. It’s just a boat, but it’s my boat, my baby, my life for the last four years.”

In the small community of the Vendee, just 30-strong for this race, everybody understood what Thomson was feeling but nobody could find the right words to say. “It was like someone in the family had died,” Thomson says of the day his bedraggled boat limped into port. “Everyone put their heads down, nobody would look at me.”

In an explosion of carbon, Thomson’s four-year plan to win the Vendee, the biggest of all solo sailing prizes, has been turned into a two-week scramble for survival. “Anger? Yeah, I’m getting more angry now and it doesn’t help that the skipper of the French trawler has gone on holiday or disappeared,” said Thomson. “But I’ve got to channel my energy into being positive. I’ve got responsibilities, to my team, my family, my sponsors. We’ve got 200 people coming down for the start.”

Thomson conquered the Southern Ocean for the first time with his second place in the inaugural Barcelona double-handed race earlier this year and had arrived at the mouth of Les Sables at the helm of one of the best-prepared boats in the fleet. Hugo Boss was quick, with 40,000 solid miles on the clock and a 34-year-old skipper who had learnt the hard way how to balance aggression and caution. On his last solo venture, the Velux 5 Oceans round-the-world race two years ago, Thomson had been forced to abandon his sinking boat 1,000 miles south of Cape Town in the Southern Ocean. After a perilous rendezvous in mid-ocean, he was rescued from his life raft by Mike Golding, one of his rivals, only for Golding’s Ecover to be dismasted a day later. Thomson absorbed the lessons of his failures and had looked sure to mount a strong challenge in the Vendee.

He has been backed by Sir Keith Mills, the founder of Team Origin, the British America’s Cup syndicate. The financial and technical weight of Team Origin has already been put at Thomson’s disposal. “The goal all along was to finish the race and win it,” said Thomson. “Now our goal is to make the start line.”