THE director of a yachting management company has been acquitted of the manslaughter of four sailors - including Farnham’s Andy Bridge - who died when their racing yacht the Cheeki Rafiki capsized in the North Atlantic.

Douglas Innis, 43, of Whitworth Crescent, Southampton and director of Stormforce Coaching Limited which owned the yacht, was found not guilty by a jury of four counts of manslaughter by gross negligence at Winchester Crown Court on Wednesday.

The verdict came after the jury had been deliberating at the retrial for 23 hours and 25 minutes.

The 40ft Cheeki Rafiki, named after a character in the Lion King, got into trouble after losing its keel on its return from Antigua to the UK in May 2014, more than 700 miles from Nova Scotia.

On board were 22 year old skipper Andy, a former member of Frensham Sailing Club and pupil of Weydon School, as well as crew members Steve Warren, 52, and Pail Goslin, 56, both from Somerset, and James Male, 22, from Southampton.

A US Coastguard-led air and sea search was launched on May 16, 2014. But, despite initial hopes the crew may have had time to escape into a life raft, the search was called off just three days later due to inclement weather.

The coastguard reversed its decision and resumed the search two days later, however, after an online petition gathered more than 200,000 signatures and a Twitter campaign was supported by thousands, including sailing legend Ben Ainsley and Farnham MP Jeremy Hunt.

This reaped dividends when the missing yacht’s upturned hull was finally discovered by a US Navy helicopter. However, a swimmer confirmed the Cheeki Rafiki’s life raft was still on board, ending any hopes for the missing sailors, all of whom are assumed lost at sea.

The bodies of the four men have never been found.

Prosecutor Nigel Lickley QC told the court the yacht had an undetected fault with bolts holding the three tonne keel to the hull which then failed causing it to fall off during the bad weather during the voyage. He added the yacht had been “unsafe and unsound” because Mr Innes had “neglected it”.

But in his defence, Mr Innes told the jury the Cheeki Rafiki had been regularly maintained and inspected with no evidence of damage to the keel. He was acquitted of all charges.

Mr Innes, and his company Stormforce Coaching Limited, is, however, still set to be sentenced on May 11 after being convicted at the first trial of failing to operate the yacht in a safe manner contrary to Section 100 of the Merchant Shipping Act.

Farnham sailor Andy Bridge grew up in Boundstone Road, Wrecclesham and joined Frensham Pond Sailing Club aged nine. He quickly made a name for himself in the club’s cadet youth dinghies, winning many races before progressing onto offshore yachts.

On graduating from Weydon School in 2008, he pursued a career on the waves and, after competing in the Round Britain and Ireland Race, began an internship with Stormforce Coaching, a Royal Yachting Association (RYA) training centre.

Friend Charlie Edwards, who knew Andy since primary school and played a key role in the campaign to resume the search, told the Herald in 2014: “Andy has been massively passionate about sailing from a young age and he was always out on the water at weekends. He got to travel a lot and made us all very jealous with his job.

“We always said he’s like a springer spaniel as he has a very bouncy personality and is very outgoing. He always thought positively and I know he would never give up.”

Despite his young age, Andy was a veteran of a number of trans-Atlantic voyages and competed in the 2013 Fastnet race with Stormforce Coaching before becoming one of the company’s Caribbean skippers on-board race yacht Cheeki Rafiki.

In his testimonial on Stormforce Coaching’s website, Andy said: “Before joining the internship I was racing yachts as a hobby – now I work for Stormforce on board their race yacht. My UK and Caribbean race seasons are broken up by skippering trans-Atlantic passages, life could not get better!”