Interesting, because Francesco di Benedetto left Grand Canary on January 2 on a modified Tornado with racks, attempting to break the same record. Francesco has not been heard from since his third day out. His team thinks his iridium phone failed but are assuming he is okay, since his epirb has not been activated.
And here is the rest of the story, as reported in Scuttlebutt:
For the first three days, Benedetto was able to provide position reports to his support team, wherein they could track his progress. But on day four, his support team lost contact with him, and for the next seventeen days their only means of hope were in that the EPIRB signal had not yet been reported. However, on January 19th, his EPIRB was activated, which placed him 700 miles from Guadalupe, and just a bit south of his direct route. 8 hours later, and just before sunset, Francesco had been intercepted and rescued (along with his catamaran) by a cargo ship on her way to Barcelona.
Benedetto, who is expected to arrive in Spain by January 27th, has been in contact with his support team, and reported that his troubles began on the 7th of January, where he lost all his equipment in a storm. Said Benedetto,
"I had nothing, imagine myself, the boat, the mast and two sails." Nothing meant no water, food, GPS, glasses, auto-pilots, headlamps, medicines, ... "Without glasses and contact lenses, I could hardly see the end of the catamaran, and at night there were no stars. I had a small compass with no light and the EBIRP in my pocket, that's it." Since Francesco had no routing support, he sailed right through areas with 20 to 30 knot wind. "The waves
were incredible,” he recalled. “Not too tall but steep and fast. Like cannon balls that I had to avoid... not for 3 or 4 hours, for days!" After sailing on for 12 days in hopes of finding a boat for help, he finally activated his
EPIRB rescue signal. -- Website:
http://www.francescodibenedetto.com/ 
