A French sailor, who was racing around the world was left stranded in the Atlantic Ocean after his boat sank. Thankfully, a rival skipper saw his distress signal and saved him. 

On Monday afternoon, PRB, the boat Kevin Escoffier was sailing in this year's Vendee Globe solo non-stop race, sent out a distress signal. This was 22 days into his race.

Escoffier was placed third in the competition when he sent a message to his onshore team on Monday, saying that water was coming into his boat. 

"Kevin sent an alert saying that he had to leave the boat, the boat was basically sinking," Hubert Lemonnier, assistant race director, told Reuters. 

"He told his team 'it's not a joke, I have to leave the boat, the boat is sinking, mayday, come and help me,' that was the message."

The directors of the Vendée Globe 2020 competition immediately diverted the other skippers in the proximity of the incident to look for Escoffier. Jean Le Cam, the nearest competitor, changed the course of his boat called Yes We Cam! to reach Escoffier. But after making initial contact with after only two hours, Le Cam lost him and was initially unable to relocate his life raft.

After a long and tense night of searching, Le Cam finally rescued Escoffier off the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa at around 5 a.m. 

"I was two hours away from PRB, something like that, I can't remember all the details but I was close to the target," Le Cam told reporters.

"So I got to the position given by the tracker and when I got to the zone, I arrived, it was all good, I saw Kevin in his life raft. I put myself windward of him, I saw Kevin, Kevin asked me 'Will you be back?', I said 'No, we are doing this now!'. I threw him the life ring and he caught it, and then he managed to catch the transmission bar and that was it."

CLICK: WHO ARE THE WATER THIEVES TARGETING THE WORLD'S DWINDLING SUPPLIES?

The French sailor was in good health, though when Le Cam picked him up he told him he was sorry for "messing it up" as Le Cam was "doing an incredible race" before stopping to rescue him.

In a video call with PRB president Jean-Jacques Laurent from Le Cam's boat, Escoffier cried while apologizing for the loss of the boat, though he said he had no regrets because the team had reinforced it as much as he could before departure from France.

"You see the images of shipwrecks? It was like that, but worse," Escoffier says during the call. "In four seconds the boat nosedived, the bow folded at 90 degrees, I put my head down in the cockpit, a wave was coming, I had time to send one text before the wave fried the electronics."

Laurent reassured Escoffier the boat was "just a material thing" and "it doesn't matter."

Before being rescued, Escoffier endured water temperatures of 10 degrees Celsius and waves 5 meters high.

Escoffier, 40, is an experienced sailor, with a resume including a Jules Verne trophy and two Volvo Ocean Race campaigns. This year's race was Escoffier's first time in the Vendee Globe, the only sailing race around the world that's solo, non-stop, and without assistance.

Le Cam and all other competitors involved in Escoffier's rescue operation were able to return to the race after the recovery of the French sailor, with the hours spent on the search taken out of their overall race time. Le Cam is now seventh in the race.

_{Cover image: Jean-Francois Monier/AFP}