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Displaying items by tag: JeanJacques Savin

A French adventurer who previously crossed the Atlantic in a barrel is missing and presumed dead at sea just weeks after beginning a solo crossing by row boat.

Jean-Jacques Savin, who was 75, had set out on 1 January from Sagres in Portugal for Martinique in the Caribbean on what was planned as a three-month voyage.

He was posting updates of his journey on Facebook and wrote last Wednesday (19 January) that despite strong winds and issues with his specialised row boat’s solar panels, he was “not in danger”, as BBC News reports.

But on Thursday (20 January) two distress beacons were activated from Savin’s position en route to the Azores, and the following day his vessel Audacieux was found overturned.

Despite earlier reports that Savin’s body had been found in his cabin, his daughter Manon confirmed on Sunday night (23 January) that his boat was found empty and a body was not recovered.

Published in Coastal Rowing

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago