LONDON — Drifting in the ocean in a sailboat at the mercy of winds and currents would be a nightmare for many. But a 71-year-old Frenchman with a taste for adventure has found a new way to conquer the Atlantic Ocean: in a barrel. The adventurer, Jean-Jacques Savin, set sail on Wednesday from El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, the Spanish archipelago west of Morocco. Many people have crawled into barrels to go over Niagara Falls, with some surviving, but no one has been known to cross the Atlantic in a barrel made of plywood. It’s smaller than a pickup and held upright by a concrete ballast.

Source: New York Times December 27, 2018 16:07 UTC