Sinking of a sailboat in Ajaccio: a second body found

After the sinking in the night from Friday to Saturday of a pleasure sailboat in the bay of Ajaccio, in Corse-du-Sud, a second body was found, we learned Sunday from the gendarmerie and the parquet floor, confirming information from Corse-Matin.

The victims are two men, one in their sixties and one in their seventies.

The third passenger, a woman in her sixties, had managed to regain the coast on her own, after the Be Bop, an 11-meter sailboat, victim of strong winds on the Isle of Beauty, broke its anchorage and struck shoals near the coast, before breaking up and sinking.

The sailboat, which had anchored at Isolella, on the south shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio, broke its moorings shortly after midnight on Saturday.

The body of the first man found, spotted in the night by the crew of one of the rescue helicopters, was brought back to the beach in Ajaccio on Saturday around 6 a.m.

The second body was seen before being lost to sight and finally found late Saturday afternoon, according to corroborating sources.

Corsica was on orange alert

The searches took place in very difficult weather conditions for the rescuers, while Corsica was on orange alert for strong wind and on yellow wave-submersion alert from Friday until Saturday 4 a.m.: gusts of wind were measured at over 90 km / h, with rough seas and troughs of up to four meters.

During the night, a firefighter diver had carried out a cursory inspection of the wreckage without being able to find any trace of the two men then missing, a sixty-year-old and a seventy-year-old.

Significant resources were deployed for this rescue operation, including a civil security helicopter, a fire brigade helicopter, an army helicopter, the intervention, assistance and rescue tug Abeille Flandre, pre-positioned in Corse-du-Sud, and a ship of the National Society for Rescue at Sea (SNSM), not to mention the land patrols of firefighters.

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As of Friday, because of this orange alert, the prefecture had called for limiting travel, respecting bans on the use of fire, avoiding the coast and listening to the local media.