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In the night between Sunday 15 and Monday 16 January, two French sailors sailing just over ten miles west of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands were involved in a fatal accident.
One of the two crew members of the Pogo 30 Poppy, both in their 60s, decided to climb the mast to carry out an emergency repair. The wind was very strong and the sea rough with waves several meters high.
Harnessed and with the help of his friend he climbed the tree about 11 meters high. Once on the mast, probably due to the strong movements of the boat which rose and fell from the waves, the man lost his balance and fell backwards, banging his head violently against the mast and, probably, against the antenna of the radar on which important traces of blood were found.
Harnessed and entangled in the halyards and shrouds, the man remained upside down and continued to lose blood.
When his travel companion realized he couldn't help him, he raised the alarm. It was just after 8pm.
The vessel was reached at 21:15 by a Helimer 201 helicopter departing from Tenerife Sur airport. When the vehicle arrived, the man was still hanging upside down from the tree and had lost consciousness. However, the air rescuer, due to the rough sea, was unable to recover the man on the tree and limited himself to harnessing and carrying away the survivor.
The man who survived, in a state of shock, was taken to the hospital in Gran Canaria while Poppy was still in the middle of the Atlantic with a man hanging from a tree.
When the helicopter intervention failed, during the night a SAR patrol boat, the Salvamar Nunki, put to sea. The patrol boat reached Poppy at dawn, but could do nothing but certify that due to rough seas and strong winds, a rescue could not be attempted. The man was still hanging from the tree.
When the day was over, another attempt to recover the man began and the SAR patrol boat, Guardamar Polimnia, set sail at dawn from Puerto del Rosario supported by the Helimer 205 specialized rescue helicopter, which took off from Gran Canaria airport.
The two vessels reached Poppy who had to abandon the rescue attempt again due to the waves being too high.
The operation ended only later when Poppy was joined by the patrol boat Miguel de Cervantes carrying a special team of Civil Guard divers who managed to get on board.
When divers arrived on the Poppy, the man had fallen to the deck and the men killed him.
Boat and victim were taken to the port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria.
The judiciary seized the boat and opened an investigation to see if everything possible was done to save the sailor's life.
