Yachting World 0shares Kevin Escoffier’s Vendée Globe rescue from a liferaft adrift in the Roaring Forties was the result of incredible seamanship. Helen Fretter spoke to him, and the team that co-ordinated the search “I AM SINKING. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. MAYDAY” At 1345 (UTC) on Monday 30 November, on a grey and lumpy South Atlantic some 840 miles south-west of Cape Town, Kevin Escoffier was 3rd in the single-handed Vendée Globe when his boat, the IMOCA 60 PRB, suddenly and catastrophically broke up. Escoffier had time only to send a three line Whatsapp message to his shore team before all communication with the boat was lost. It would be 11 hours before anyone on land heard from him again. This is the story of his stunning Vendée rescue.