CANADIAN search and rescue teams have picked up a Frenchman who was apparently leading the Plymouth, England, to Newport, Rhode Island, yacht race yesterday.

Francis Joyaon (40) was the second French competitor in the solo yacht race to be rescued off Canada, in four days. On Thursday, Laurent Bourgnon (30), was picked up by a passing cargoship.

Also yesterday, a Devon publican, Peter Crowther, was in a dinghy, when he was spotted by a RAF Nimrod aircraft from RAF Kinloss, which flew to answer the distress call from the automatic beacon on his 42-feet monohull Galway Blazer 700 miles out.

Crowther is now aboard the container ship Atlantic Compass and will be landed at Halifax, Nova Scotia on Saturday, said a Europe I race spokesman in Plymouth.

Meanwhile, Joyaon, like Bourgnon, managed to stay afloat on top of his overturned trimaran, the Banque Populaire, while the Canadian rescue vessel Parizeau steamed toward him.

"The trimaran has a hatch in its bottom and Joyaon was able to crawl through it," said Lieutenant Commander Glenn Chamberlain of the search and rescue centre in Halifax.

"He's been up on top," said Chamberlain, "but he's been able to get out of the elements and he was able to get down for food and for his hand-held radio."

Roger Metherell of the Royal Western Yacht Club said in a telephone interview from Plymouth, England, that Joyaon was easily in the lead when his boat overturned.

"He was way ahead of the pack," said Metherell.

In the other incident, Crowther, taking part in his fifth transatlantic race, was said to be "waving and jolly" when he was picked up, added the spokesman.

But exactly what happened to the Chinese rigged Galway Blazer, originally built for the first-round-the-world race in 1968, is not yet known.

The mahogany-built yacht sank "very quickly" after hitting something in the water, according to the master of the Atlantic Compass, said Falmouth coastguards.