Yachtsman Laurent Bourgnon reported missing after dive.

[Montanan]

Upsetting news this morning from French Polynesia.

Yachtsman Laurent Bourgnon reported missing after dive


31 minutes ago



















PAPEETE, Tahiti (AP) — Leading Swiss yachtsman Laurent Bourgnon was reported missing by authorities in French Polynesia on Thursday after a diving accident.


The Papeete rescue center in Tahiti said the 49-year-old Bourgnon, who twice won the prestigious Route du Rhum trans-Atlantic sailing race, was diving on his own. Crew members and passengers of the boat alerted emergency services Wednesday afternoon when he did not get back on board.


Marie Baville, the cabinet director for the head of Polynesia's governing council, told The Associated Press that Bourgnon had organized the trip with tourists on his boat, which was anchored in the Toau atoll, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Tahiti in the Tuamotu Archipelago when the incident happened.


"This is not a particularly dangerous area," Baville said.


She added that the search for Bourgnon, which involved a helicopter, was called off at night and was set to start again early Thursday morning.
Bourgnon, whose brother Yvan this week completed a sail around the world on a 20-foot boat without on-board accommodation, is one of the most accomplished sailors of his generation.


After a cruise around the world with his parents in his teenage years, Bourgnon crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1986, on a small Hobie Cat catamaran with his friend Fred Giraldi. He won the Solitaire du Figaro in his first attempt two years later.


Bourgnon secured a third-place finish at the Route du Rhum in 1990 before winning twice in a row in the famed race between Brittany and the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in 1994 and 1998.


Bourgnon also competed in car rallies, including the Dakar Rally several times in the early 2000s.

[Polux]

Sad!!!!!

Life has these mysterious things, Bourgnon was known to be one of the more adventurous solo trimaran skippers one that pushed really hard taking huge risks and he dies...diving while is brother Yvan, also a famous navigator and even crazier sailor, is finishing an incredibly dangerous circumnavigation on a beach cat and surviving the odds.

Farewell to Laurent Bourgnon a sailor that lived his dreams and made many others dream about it: