Monday, November 14, five days after the departure from Saint-Malo of the famous La Route du Rhum nautical competition, Fabrice Amedeo's ship... caught fire in the open sea!
"I started to see the bottom of the boat warp," says the skipper.
There, I understood that there was a fire”.
“The situation was really critical”
Far from it all, he nevertheless decided very quickly to abandon his ship: "I pushed the life raft over the lifelines – the kind of balcony at the back of the boat – before jumping into the water", he remembers.
But there is a problem: the life raft is connected to the boat by a rope which does not break as it should have done.
"The situation was really critical, so I hurriedly looked for a knife, which I eventually found, and cut the rope."
After 2h30 in the middle of the waters, a cargo ship rescues him.
"A few seconds after getting on board, my legs started to shake, I was very out of breath even though I hadn't made any particular physical effort... I think that at that time, there was the adrenaline coming back down and I realized what I had just been through.
OUR “ROUTE DU RHUM” FILE
When he left the freighter, one of the crew members said to him: “Have a nice second life, sir”.
“It moved me, says Fabrice Amedeo.
And since then, I can't stop thinking about it, saying to myself: well yeah, in fact, I have a second life that is starting.
And so I'm not really in the state of mind of a survivor, but more in that of someone who is offered a second chance… and who is going to seize it head-on!
".
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