the harrowing story of the husband of the kayaker who died at sea

In the afternoon of Friday August 19, in his hospital room in Bastia (Haute-Corse), Thierry Puyfoulhoux is consumed by sadness. He has a blank stare, moist eyes, and seems to relive every minute of that morning of Thursday August 18 when everything changed. After a kayak tour of Corsica which lasted three weeks, Thierry, 60, and his wife Odile, 63, left on Thursday for a final day at sea. There was no weather alert at this precise moment. , but a gray sky threatened off Furiani (Haute-Corse), at 8 a.m.

“The sky was very dense. (…) Barely embarked, we began to sweat. It was strange”, says Thierry Puyfoulhoux. The couple then progressed towards Bastia (Haute-Corse), but the conditions deteriorated. At 9:30 a.m., the kayak overturned for the first time. Odile clung to the boat. As the storm rumbled, the waves and the wind raged. In the water, the retiree was unresponsive. “I jumped into the water, I went to see her. Her eyes were open, but she was no longer looking at anything, and then there was foam coming out of her mouth”says Thierry Puyfoulhoux, very moved.