Dhe nightmare of every ocean sailor was experienced by a 62-year-old Frenchman in the Atlantic: After his 12-meter-long boat “Jeanne Solo Sailor” capsized off the north-west coast of Spain on Monday, he had to wait 16 hours in icy water and in an air bubble for rescue, which got smaller every hour. “When I look today at how destroyed the boat is, I don’t know how I survived,” Laurent Camprubi told the newspaper “La Voz de Galicia” on Thursday. The Spanish sea rescue service also spoke of a miraculous action that was “on the edge of the impossible” because of the darkness and stormy seas.

The air bubble halved between late Monday evening and Tuesday morning “from 70 to 30 to 40 centimeters,” Camprubi said. “It was a race against time.” According to experts, he was only able to survive in the icy water because he was wearing a wetsuit at the time of the accident.

The only reason he was able to survive until the rescue on Tuesday afternoon by divers and a helicopter from the sea rescue service was because he was constantly thinking about his wife and five children between the ages of three months and 37 years, the man from Marseille assured. The 62-year-old is doing well now.

The Frenchman said he was racing between St Malo and the Antilles in the Caribbean when the accident happened around 15 nautical miles off the coast of Spain’s Galicia region and an automatic distress call was sent out. As can be seen in a video from the sea rescue service, the Frenchman hit the inside of his ship several times during the rescue operation to tell the emergency services that he was alive.

After the rescue, he immediately spoke to his wife on the phone – so to speak: “I couldn’t speak, we both could only cry. It was an unbelievable feeling.” Now he “no longer wants to risk his life” and devotes more time to his family. He will no longer take part in dangerous one-handed regattas on the oceans and will only sail in the Mediterranean in the future. On Friday he wanted to fly back to his family in Marseille.