A FORMER top cop’s dream of skippering a yacht round the world in the Clipper Race has been literally dashed on the rocks - after a horror injury was followed by the £1m boat running aground on a reef.

Former Chepstow School pupil David Hartshorn was looking forward to returning to the race in Australia after having his thumb almost completely ripped off in a freak onboard accident, when he had to be airlifted to hospital in Portugal for emergency surgery.

But having spent two months recovering, he was shattered to learn that the Greenings yacht had been wrecked off the coast of South Africa.

While the crew were all safely rescued and found berths on the 11 other yachts in the race, the skipper has been left high and dry without a boat to command.

The 52-year-old, who was head of public order as a superintendent in the Metropolitan Police before becoming a professional sailor, spent more than a year preparing for the Clipper challenge, which is the only global race crewed by amateur sailors.

Describing the last few months as “emotional”, he said: “For me the race is over this time, although I may be called back to cover if another skipper, like myself, is unable to do a leg. I will consider doing the next Clipper Race 2019-20, but that’s a long way off yet.”

On August 26, just days after the start of the 46,000-mile Clipper race in Liverpool, David was airlifted to hospital 500 miles off the coast of Portugal and underwent four hours of surgery after his left thumb got caught in a spinnaker sheet, leaving the thumb hanging by a thread.

“The moment it happened, I knew I had done something and I knew that something wasn’t quite right,” he said.

The father-of-one, who was in charge of policing the 2011 Royal Wedding and was the number two officer for the London Olympics, said he could see his thumb “flopping off to one side”, but added: “I did 30 years as a police officer, I have seen a lot worse... it just so happened to be me this time.”

Portuguese rescuers rushed to the boat to pick him up in a helicopter, winching him in from the sea in an agreed medivac manoeuvre.

“That was a very surreal moment, to actually step off the boat and watch it disappear and just hope that the helicopter would actually pick me up,” he said.

But just as David was set to rejoin his Greenings boat in Freemantle, Australia, for the fourth leg to Sydney, disaster struck on October 31 as the yacht struck a reef on the western side of the Cape Peninsula.

The vessel, which had just started leg three from Cape Town, was left partially submerged with its hull ripped open, and insurers decided to write it off.

David said: “Halloween proved to be a true nightmare for Team Greenings.

The main thing is that all onboard are safe and well.”