A piece of the boat French sailor Jean Le Cam abandoned in the Vendée Globe last January after its keel fell off has washed up 1,600 miles away in the South Sandwich Islands.

Le Cam swam out of the upturned hull of the boat on 6 January last year, to be rescued by fellow solo sailor Vincent Riou approximately 200 miles west of Cape Horn. It was not possible to salvage the boat afterwards and the boat was written off.

Nothing has been seen of the boat until earlier this month, when a piece of carbon bearing the name VM Matériaux was discovered in the sub-Antarctic islands near South Georgia by famous polar explorer Jerome Poncet (he of the yachts Damien and Golden Fleece).

He sent a photo of his son Leiv posing with it to the French magazine Voiles et Voiliers (see it here).

The photo above also shows how far the debris has travelled in the 11 months since the boat was abandoned, driven as you would expect by the unceasing westgoing winds and currents of the Southern Ocean.