Miraculous rescue after top sailor falls overboard with phone
by Lee Mylchreest on 2 Nov 2011
Florence Arthaud, 1990 Route de Rhum SW
She is one of the world's top sailors, with several crossings of the Atlantic under her belt and a varied and incident-prone life. But little could compare with the miraculous survival French sailor Florence Arthaud has just had taking a pee off the deck of the boat while sailing solo off the north-east corner of Corsica in the Mediterranean. She fell off.
She told a French TV station that she 'quite simply fell into the water while preparing to take a pee', while sailing alone on her 33ft (10m) yacht, The Argade II, near Cap Corse.
Fortunately she held onto the phone which was luckily in her hand, and which she had only bought the previous week and was encased in a waterproof covering.
She called her mother in Paris, who raised the alarm. Rescue authorities then geolocated her by targeting the position of her mobile phone. Conscious but in a state of hypothermia, Ms Arthaud was rescued two hours later. She was hoisted to a helicopter and taken to to the hospital in Bastia, then released the next day.
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