At the end of last December, we posted about the 72-year-old French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin who set off to attempt to drift across the Atlantic in a large wooden barrel. He departed from El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands, west of Morocco, with the intention of drifting, carried by the winds and currents, across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now over 115 days into the crossing, Savin is reported to be in good spirits and to be, well, still drifting. He and his barrel have drifted over 2,500 nautical miles from the Canary Islands and are now within 400 – 1,000 miles of land, depending on which way the winds and currents take him. 

Savin has had several close calls so far on the voyage. As reported by the Daily Mail, in late February, he nearly got rammed by a cargo ship that wasn’t responding to his radio calls. ‘Luckily I shot up a flare. It was like being trapped on a railroad track and I was watching the oncoming train,’ he said.

But the most perilous moment came on March 28, when his barrel was being pummelled by huge waves that were threatening to turn the vessel completely upside-down.

His stocks were replenished during a visit from the Ronald H. Brown, a US oceanography vessel based in Charleston, South Carolina.

To follow Savin’s progress, go to his Facebook Page — TESA : Traversée de l’Atlantique en Tonneau.