IT WAS a modern day Marie Celeste.

Hampshire yachtswoman Dee Caffari and her crew of Turn The Tide on Plastic encountered a deserted sailing boat drifting in the Pacific during Leg 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race from Hong Kong to Auckland.

Looking through binoculars skipper Dee could detect no sign of life on the yacht.

She checked with race to control to see if they had record of another craft in the vicinity and tried to make radio contact with the mystery craft with no luck.

Turn the Tide on Plastic's drone was then sent up to take a closer look.

Images taken by the drone were sent back to race control who confirmed that the drifting vessel was the Sea Nymph from Hawaii whose crew of two, and their dog, had abandoned her in storms a 1,000 miles off the coast of Japan in October.

The two women and their pet were rescued by the US Navy.

Dee wrote in her race blog: "She was sitting pretty low in the bow and her mainsail was washed over the side but the rest of her looked like she would make a nice cruiser.

"We discussed salvage rights for a while and estimated that the race director would not give us redress if we towed her to Auckland while racing. So there she sits a hazard to shipping, a risk to islands, reefs and atolls and slowly not going anywhere."

"We are grateful we saw her during the day as this could have been a very different story had we come across her at night. She was floating stern to us with no lights or signal being given out, there is no way we would have seen her.

"I just hope now we have given authorities her position there is a chance for salvage or for scuttling her to prevent a far worse disaster in our oceans. We are asking you not to litter the oceans with plastic and here we have a whole yacht floating aimlessly in our oceans!"