THE elderly father of a sailor hijacked by pirates off the coast of Africa is in shock after being told his son and daughter-in-law have been held captive aboard their yacht.

Alfred Chandler, 98, from Churchfields, Dartmouth, Devon, is being comforted by a neighbour after he was told of the plight of son Paul, who went missing with his wife Rachel as they sailed from the Seychelles towards Tanzania.

Mr Chandler senior, who is profoundly deaf and in ill health, was told by neighbours what was happening to his son.

His daughter Jill Marshment, who lives in Cheltenham, spoke of how the news about her brother was broken.

She said: "A neighbour kindly went to him to tell him this was going to be on the news and they saw it together.

"He is 98 years old, stone deaf and he really had quite a turn after this shock. He is very frail and has been in hospital four times in the last year."

Urgent searches are under way to find the couple, who are thought to have been hijacked off the east coast of Africa.

Last night, Falmouth Coastguard said it was the first to be alerted to the distress signal four days ago.

A spokesman said the control room worked with the Seychelles authorities to conduct a search of the area, but nothing was found.

"We were the first port of call when the alarm was raised, but when a beacon goes off, there's no indication what the distress may be. Nothing was found during the search, but we have now found they may have been taken by pirates, although we don't yet know."

The European Union Naval Force Somalia said one of its ships involved in the search had located a yacht about 200 miles to the east of the Somali port of Haradheere.

A spokesman said: "One of the ship's helicopters saw a yacht towing a pirate's skiff (a small boat). As light was fading, it was impossible to identify it. It's in the area where we've been looking."

But the spokesman said he did not want to give the family "false hope" and added that investigations were continuing.

A news agency yesterday claimed to have been contacted by a man, understood to be one of the pirates, to say the couple were "in our hands now".

The man, who gave his name as Hassan, said the captives were healthy and ransom demands would follow.

The route followed by Mr and Mrs Chandler, aged 58 and 55, would have taken them near Somali waters notorious for pirate attacks.

Mrs Marshment revealed her brother had no money to pay a ransom. She said he was sailing around the world "on a shoestring" and did not have the funds to pay off his captors.

She said her brother and his wife had been married for 25 years and took early retirement. They had spent the last three years sailing the world in their yacht Lynn Rival, which they had owned for 30 years.

She was informed Paul, who worked as an engineer before retiring, had been kidnapped at 8.30pm on Sunday.

Counter piracy rescue teams have been scouring the area off the African coast after a distress signal was received from the Lynn Rival on Friday.

Mr and Mrs Chandler, from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, have been making regular sailing trips across the Mediterranean and elsewhere since retirement.

Mrs Marshment said the latest she had been told was her brother and sister-in- law were definitely being held captive.

"The Foreign Office is involved. There has been an air and sea search. Really now I am just waiting to hear what is happening," she said.

Her brother and his wife had kept a boat in Greece for many years and they had sailed through the Suez Canal and down as far as India.

"All we can do now is wait and see what comes up," said Mrs Marshment.

She told BBC News: "I'm sure they will come out of it all right and they will do the best they can. The adrenalin will start flowing. They're quite strong people. They don't go into things lightly."

She said the couple were "quite happy with their own company", "very hardworking" and widely read.

"It's like a bad dream," she said. "I just can't believe it's happening, but it does happen in life, I'm afraid."