LE PECQ, France — A 75-year-old French adventurer has died on a solo attempt to row across the Atlantic Ocean.
The death of Jean-Jacques Savin was announced by his friends on a Facebook page that had been chronicling his voyage.
They said maritime rescue services located his body on Saturday inside the cabin of his boat, named “Audacious,” which was found overturned off the Azores Islands, a mid-Atlantic Portuguese archipelago.
The former soldier set off on Jan. 1 from the southern tip of Portugal on the westward voyage he had anticipated would take about three months.
In 2019, Savin had previously floated alone across the Atlantic in a large barrel-shaped capsule. Propelled only by winds and currents, that crossing from Spain’s Canary Islands to the Caribbean took 127 days.
Savin had activated two distress beacons on Thursday night.
“Unfortunately, the ocean this time was stronger this time than our friend, he who so loved navigating and the sea,” the Facebook post announcing his death said.
