Adventurer (72) crosses Atlantic Ocean in self-built barrel
Took him just over four months, but French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin succeeded in crossing the Atlantic. He did that in an orange wooden barrel, propelled by nothing more than the current. Yesterday night the 72-year-old ex-soldier arrived on the French island of Martinique, in the Caribbean.
Savin already got out of his tub last Friday, after 127 days and 5,800 kilometers at sea, and boarded a tanker in the direction of the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. After some rest, a French tugboat picked him up there. It had come specifically to take the adventurer to Martinique. Savin spoke in the port of Fort-de-France, capital of the French island, about an “exciting but very risky journey”.
The Frenchman had to put it inside his wooden barrel with about six square meters, to cook, sleep and store his goods. He lost four kilograms, one per month. A friend of doctors who were waiting for Savin recommended a full medical check-up.
The adventurer left on December 26 last year on the Canary Island of El Hierro. More than 23,000 people followed his heaving story on Facebook. In principle, there will also be a book about the crossing.
