Ecco le ultime notizie di ieri (22 gennaio) avute al telefono da Francesco ancora bordo del cargo Norman Lady. Dal suo racconto - che ha davvero dell’incredibile - possiamo immaginare i terribili giorni trascorsi in solitudine, senza equipaggiamento e viveri, in balia del mare e del vento. Per fortuna il suo Bella Stella (scafo albero e vele Ulmann realizzate con tecnologia Spidertech rimasti integri malgrado la tempesta attraversata) gli ha consentito di continuare a navigare e finalmente di essere tratto in salvo dalla nave norvegese.

Last night I finally had a long conversation with Francesco. His story is so incredible that I hardly believed what I heard. After losing all the equipment in a storm the 7th of January he sailed for 12 days trying to find a boat for help, relying on the EBIRP only as a final resource. “I had nothing, immagine myself, the boat, the mast and two sails". Nothing means no water, food, GPS, glasses, auto-pilots, headlamps, medicines, … “Without glasses and contact lenses I could hardly see the end of the cathamaran and at night there were no stars. I had a small compass with no light and the EBIRP in my pocket, that’s it".

Francesco explained that the crew of the cargo Norman Lady (Oslo) did a truly impressive rescue operation. The EBIRP signal was giving a wrong GPS position (!) so the cargo spent hours searching about 10 to 20 miles away from Francesco. They were about to give up when they decided to check an area where for a second they had spotted a small radar echo, something that might have been a dolfin. They tuned the radar in order to intercept small objects and after about 5 hours, in the middle of the night, not at sunset as we thought, they found Francesco.