Capsize!

In addition to lessons learned on survival and safety equipment, the author, in a gripping and compelling story, tells of the realities of being a castaway.

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While on passage from Bermuda to New York, the trimaran RTL-Timex was capsized in a storm. The crew of five, including the author, Parisian journalist Nicolas Angel, climbed into the boat’s survival capsule, but by morning, the “unsinkable” tri was sinking, and they were obliged to launch their life raft. The seas threw the water-logged hull against the raft, threatening to damage it, so that finally they had to cut themselves loose and abandon their yacht. For nine days, in almost constant gales and high seas and the cold of the North Atlantic, they survived in their raft, radioing for help and sighting five ships which passed without stopping despite their flares and signals. The raft capsized, and they constantly had to stay on watch and counterbalance it against the waves. The sixth ship almost came too late: two of the crew were by then close to death from hypothermia, and the others were nearing the end of their resources as they watched them decline. They were sustained by constant inventiveness, by their friendship, and by the firm conviction that this nightmare had to be endured.