Northern tip of the island.
Credit : Jean-Marie de Bernardy de Sigoyer

As the night went by, the wind became less strong and the roar of the waves breaking on the beach also decreased in intensity. Everybody adapted to the island lifestyle, we got up early and went directly to the beach. I met one of the « weather auxiliaries » who was examining, as every morning, the tracks of the turtles which had come to lay eggs at the top of the beach.
I counted five of them at the northern tip of the island.
When they walk up the beach, turtles leave an unbroken track similar to the caterpillars of a tank. North-East of the tip we could see two leatherbacks being tossed by the breakers.

After we had breakfast, we got together for a first meeting.
Since everything was all right with our accommodation, we could unpack and put our equipment away, run the outboard motors in a container filled with fresh water, prepare the inflatable dinghy, charge the batteries of our VHF radios, GPS and metal detectors, find a place for everything…

While everybody was bustling about, Sudel Fuma came with me to see if we could localize the places shown on the maps drawn by the Utile’s sailors. These places included the well dug by the castaways, the French sailors’ camp, the Malagasy camp, the oven built to cook biscuits, the building site of a makeshift boat, and the forge.

Joel Mouret, the meteorologist behind that mission, helped us to draw a precise map of the island. During one of his missions on the island, he walked along the shore and noted down the positions with his GPS receiver. I made use of these positions to draw the outline of the island which appeared to be very similar to the official map, and I copied out the places shown on the handwritten maps.
By doing so, we had a geographical position of these places and we had to check that they were precise enough for us to find the castaways’ tracks.

We started from the northern end of the runway, heading towards the oven position. The receiver indicated we were approaching it, the sand was full of holes dug by turtles wanting to lay eggs.

We were approximately 15 metres away from the position when we saw a first brick. Then we saw several other brick fragments scattered around the area, they had been unburied by the turtles.

Probing the oven area.

Credit : Jean-Marie de Bernardy de Sigoyer

We were satisfied for two reasons. On one hand, we discovered one of the most symbolic places of the castaways’ story; on the other hand we knew that we could localize the other places by using the same method.

Then we moved towards the Malagasy and the crew camps, which are flat areas set back from the beach. The Malagasy camp area contained several « tumuli ».
In the afternoon, Thomas Romon probed the oven area for the first time. A lot of brick fragments were put to light. We also discovered long iron nails certainly coming from the Utile. We could see her anchor emerging from the foam tens of metres down below.

We decided to go on probing this site full of holes dug by the turtles.

Everybody of the team welcomed this first unexpected discovery with joy.