Source: GEIPAN (French government UFO program)

The following is a brief summary of the case. The case is from the files of the official French government UFO research program GEIPAN (Group for the Study and Information of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomenon), which is a part of CNES, the French government space agency. The full report and file on this case [in French language] is on the GEIPAN website at http://www.cnes-geipan.fr/geipan. The case has been classified as a 'Class D' case, which are the unexplained cases in the GEIPAN files.

The summary has been translated using automatic computer translation, so it is not a perfect translation.

In the night of July 3, 1997 at 4 a.m., a witness in his sailing ship observes an intense gleam which goes down quickly during 2 to 3 seconds, stabilizes itself a few moments before moving out again very quickly horizontally to disappear into 2 or 3 seconds approximately. The witness calls his two fellow-members who were sleeping to announce his observation to them when they are witness to a second phenomenon in the form of yellow rhombus ochre with lights on the tops. The object moved very quickly at the level of the clouds and disappeared at the end of 10 to 15 seconds. The phenomena observed were not explained.