When it's not time ... And yet Vidam Perevertilov, chief engineer of the Silver Supporter, a supply ship, saw death up close, before miraculously escaping in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, as reported by the British newspaper T
he Guardian
.
Unlike Kevin Escoffier, the castaway from the Vendée Globe, who had been able to tell his team that he was sinking and take refuge in a life raft to wait for help and be picked up by Jean Le Cam, this sailor fell to water on February 16, at 4 am, without anyone noticing.
His boat was then carrying out supplies between the New Zealand port of Tauranga and the British island of Pitcairn.
Basically, he found himself paddling, alone in the heart of the most isolated ocean on the planet, and without a life jacket or means of communication to warn the earth, as the late Florence Arthaud had been able to do during '' a fall in the sea, off Cap Corse in November 2011 (before dying in a helicopter accident).
Ler Silver supporterourism of the Pitcairn Islands
But his time had not come, Vidam Perevertilov found his salvation by swimming towards a "black spot on the horizon".
Which happened to be an old drift fishing buoy.
He clings to it.
And wait for help.
Long time.
About half a day.
The time that the other sailors on board notice his disappearance (6 hours), read his logbook, issue a distress call, which will take off the planes of the French Navy from Polynesia, and estimate his position in the instant of its fall into the sea and its drift thanks in particular to Météo France calculations on winds and currents.
"His will to survive was strong, but he told me until the sun came up he was having a hard time staying afloat," his son Marat told New Zealand newspaper
Stuff
.
In the end, the story ends well as Vidam Perevertilov is spotted and then recovered by his own ship.
Exhausted but alive fourteen hours after leaving him involuntarily ...
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