a 22-hour swimming relay

Jonathan, Clément, Hugo, Denis, Mathilde… They are 11 sea rescuers from Île de Ré and on Friday September 15, they will jump into the water towards Les Sables-d’Olonne to swim to Île de Ré , in 22 hours, in relay. Purpose of the maneuver: to shine a spotlight on the commitment of rescuers at sea.

>> More fear than harm for lost divers rescued by the SNSM

These often go out to sea when everyone is returning, when the sea is dangerous and the conditions difficult to rescue a windsurfer carried away by the wind, sometimes reckless people but also good sailors victims of a gust of wind that picks up or a falling mast. Their motto could be: “save or die”, but for that you have to have confidence in each other, to team up, because you can’t both pilot the boats with orange hulls while letting go of the bar to retrieve a victim or transmit information over the radio. Alone, at sea, we can’t do anything.

There are 11 of them leaving and they hope to arrive in 50, 100 or more, as far as Brittany, and perhaps in a few years… in the Mediterranean. Swim together to have fun, and show their cohesion. That of 9,000 rescuers ready to intervene 24 hours a day, 7 days a week thanks to donors who finance 80% of the budget of the National Society of Sea Rescuers, the SNSM. Volunteer rescuers and proud of it, because their wealth is the 32,000 people rescued each year. And a group of friends to forget those for whom they arrive too late…

>>”It’s our mission, but we can’t get used to this kind of thing”: the dismay of the rescuers after a new shipwreck in the English Channel

Death at sea was so inevitable for so long that the very term rescue did not appear until the 18th century. Rescuers are a pure human construction born from the imperative need for help among seafarers but also now of solidarity with all those who, fleeing poverty or war, find themselves, too, despite themselves, taking the sea, when the sea does not take them.