Adventurer crossed the Atlantic in a wine barrel
Frenchman lost at sea in his latest voyage
Jean-jacques Savin, who has died aged 75 on a solo attempt to row across the Atlantic, made headlines in 2019 when he crossed the ocean in a barrel.
A French former paratrooper, Savin secured a sponsorship from a Bordeaux wine barrel maker. With money raised through crowdfunding, Savin built a two-metre wide, three-metre long craft out of resin-coated plywood and painted it bright orange.
He equipped it with a kitchen area and a mattress with straps to keep him from being thrown about. He installed a porthole to watch passing fish, and a solar panel to enable GPS positioning, power a desalinator and allow him to communicate with the outside world.
The voyage did not go entirely to plan. Adverse winds drove his craft off course and he spent days lashed to his bunk as the barrel was tossed by giant waves. Savin declared success on April 28, 2019, when he crossed the west meridian that defines the Caribbean zone. A passing Dutch tanker picked him up and took him to the Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius, where, after 127 days at sea, he was reported to be four kilograms lighter than when he set off, but in good health.
He said that his next adventure would be to swim the English Channel, but instead he set out to row solo across the Atlantic.
On Jan. 1 he set off in his eight metre-long craft, Audacieux, from the southern tip of Portugal, intending to “laugh at old age.”
On Jan. 19 he posted that he was experiencing problems with his solar power equipment, though he was “not in danger.” But in the early hours of Jan. 21 he sent off two distress signals.
Later that day the Portuguese coast guard found his boat overturned near the Azores. At the time of writing, no body has been found.
The son of an oyster farmer, Jean-jacques Savin was born on Jan. 14, 1947, at Ares on the edge of the Arcachon basin in southwest France.
His barrel crossing of the Atlantic was Savin’s fifth, after four earlier solo adventures in yachts. But he claimed the experience beat all his earlier voyages: “It’s freedom. Complete freedom. It’s hard to convey. No one tells you what to do. There are no rules. It’s freedom.”
Jean-jacques Savin is survived by a wife and daughter.