However, Tetley knew that he was pushing his boat too hard. On 20 May he ran into a storm near the Azores and began to worry about the boat's severely weakened state. Hoping that the storm would soon blow over, he lowered all sail and went to sleep with the boat lying a-hull. In the early hours of the next day he was awoken by the sounds of tearing wood. Fearing that the bow of the port hull might have broken off, he went on deck to cut it loose, only to discover that in breaking away it had made a large hole in the main hull, from which "Victress" was now taking on water too rapidly to stop. He sent a Mayday, and luckily got an almost immediate reply. He abandoned ship just before "Victress" finally sank and was rescued from his liferaft that evening, having come to within of finishing what would have been the most significant voyage ever made in a multi-hulled boat.