This Extremely Brave Man Is Trying to Sail Across the Atlantic in a Glorified Barrel
Some men run marathons. Some climb mountains. Others go to more...unusual lengths to appease their sense of adventure.
The man I’m about to tell you about fits among the latter group: those who have evidently exhausted all other avenues of adventure and must pursue undertakings that seem-to the rest of us whose thirst for thrill is quenched by more prosaic means-absurd.
His name is Jean-Jacques Savin, and he’s attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a barrel.
The 71-year-old Frenchman, who is presumably doing all this of his own volition, set sail from Canary Islands off the coast of Spain on Wednesday, in hopes of reaching the Caribbean in three months. His plan-to the extent it can be called that-is evidently to be carried by currents the entire way, as though the mighty Atlantic Ocean were but a lazy river at a waterpark.
Indeed, our venturer will bob along the world’s second largest ocean, which covers a fifth of the planet’s surface, in his ten foot long vessel without the aid of even an oar or a sail-nothing but his own thoughts and, in an admirable display of Frenchness, some foie gras and fine wine, a bottle of which he plans to enjoy on his 72nd birthday next month.
I’ll be honest here: I don’t find the idea of floating around drinking Bordeaux and eating foie all day for a few months altogether displeasing. Indeed, I wouldn’t mind embarking on a similar, albeit land-based, version of his enterprise myself. But I fear that our man Jean-Jacques has perhaps been blinded by the promise of such pleasures to the very obvious perils to which he’s submitted himself.
The Atlantic, after all, has done in far more formidable vessels than the ten by six plywood cask he’s voyaging in. And, of course, the mighty ocean itself is not the only hazard that awaits him-it’s also the sharks, whales, and other great sea monsters who make their home in its depths. I’m also curious about the more banal concerns he will encounter, and perhaps already has. Where, for instance, is he going to go to the bathroom? What will he do for sustenance when his supply of foie and Sauterne runs out? And how will he occupy himself out there on the lonesome ocean, no land in sight, for months on end?
That is perhaps what separates men like Savin from men like me. For a true adventurer like him-a former military parachutist, park ranger, and pilot-such questions seem mere considerations to entertain during the course of the endeavor, whereas for me, they are but the kickers on a long list of extremely obvious reasons I would never do the thing.
Unsurprisingly, the singular nature of Savin’s mission is of keen interest to researchers in several fields. Oceanographers will use markers he drops along his journey to help study currents; wine experts will study the effects of the ocean’s volatile waves on his Bordeaux; and Savin, himself, will be a kind of test-case for researchers studying the effects of confinement.
He set sail the day after Christmas, will celebrate the New Year and his birthday on the high seas, and hopes to reach Barbados or the French Caribbean in his barrel by the early spring.
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