Screengrab: Youtube/Bla Bla 1
That headline is not hyperbole. It’s very literal. Jean-Jacques Savin has already sailed across the Atlantic Ocean four times in his lifetime and so apparently, he felt his fifth crossing should be spent inside a 990-pound orange barrel equipped to operate like a floating mini home.
Savin recently set out from El Hierro in Spain’s Canary Islands, headed for…well, he hopes the Caribbean. “Maybe Barbados,” he says. “Although I’d really like it to be a French island like Martinique or Guadeloupe. That would be easier for the paperwork and for bringing the barrel back.”
The 71-year-old, self-described “seasoned sportsman” will be carried across the Atlantic by nothing more than the ocean’s currents, so where and when he lands is entirely up to Mother Nature, completing “a crossing where the man would not be captain of his boat, but passenger of the Ocean,” he says.
So his home for the coming months is a 990-pound orange barrel with about 65-square feet of living space inside, equipped with a bunk, kitchen, storage space, and portholes. He also made sure to pack a block of foie gras and a bottle of Sauternes white wine for New Year’s Eve as well as a bottle of red Saint-Emilion for his 72nd birthday in January.
If all goes according to plan, Savin should arrive on the other side of the Atlantic this coming spring, tracking his progress via GPS the entire way.
