Found “lifeless” the 75-year-old Frenchman who was rowing across the Atlantic

The body of a septuagenarian French, who had been rowing across the Atlantic since January 1, “was found dead inside the cabin of his canoe,” his team reported to AFP on Saturday.

Jean-Jacques Savin, who turned 75 on January 14 aboard his canoe “Audaz”, eight meters long and 1.70 wide, had set sail on January 1 from Sagres (southern Portugal) to become “the dean of the Atlantic”, willing to perform a feat to “mock old age”.

On Friday, he activated his distress beacons and on Saturday, his team reported that they had “no contact” with him since.

According to his team, Portuguese maritime security located his capsized boat off the Azores on Friday and this Saturday, “a diver was able to descend and visit the boat.”

For her part, the adventurer’s daughter, Manon, explained that the search operation “was carried out immediately in coordination with the French, Portuguese and American sea rescue services.”

At the time of the last contact, Savin was in the high seas, north of Madeira, and was heading towards the small island of Ponta Delgada, in the Azores archipelago, to repair his boat, said the communication manager of the team of volunteers.

After being diverted due to bad winds and having considerably lengthened its planned route, the septuagenarian had serious problems, caused by failures of electric batteries and solar collectors.

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