Ben Turner, 27, along with two crew members Margaret Bowling and Clark Carterm, was on an expedition to the east coast of Tasmania when the boat overturned about 5.30am.

The crew were heading to a ‘‘rendezvous point’’ to meet water police, expedition manager Margaret Bowling said in an audio blog post from the boat about 3pm yesterday.

She said Mr Turner would be leaving the boat for a medical assessment after receiving a suspected broken elbow when the boat capsized.

Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Michael Efron said there were gale force winds in the area last night of up to 100km/h at their peak between 1am and 3am. There was also thunderstorm activity and warnings were in place for the region.

Ms Bowling tweeted about 3.30am yesterday: ‘‘deck awash with phosforescense [sic] from MONSTER waves. wild!’’.

She tweeted two hours later: ‘‘just capsized. all 3 of us were in cabin and boat righted FAST.’’

The Weekly spoke to Mr Turner two days before he left. He was optimistic that he would learn a lot about his abilities and the vessel on the trip.

The Tasmanian trip was a training run for his attempt in April to row solo across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Sydney to raise awareness of cystic fibrosis.

The 27-year-old’s family friend Murray Brown has the incurable life-shortening condition, which affects organs like the lungs and pancreas.