Álvaro de Marichalar resumes his trip around the world in the “smallest transatlantic”

Miami, Feb 19 (EFE) .- The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Marichalar resumed this Saturday from Miami the world tour that began in 2019 aboard the “Numancia”, a jet ski just over three meters in length, the ” world’s smallest ocean liner.

The adventurer, who had to interrupt his journey in Miami in March 2020 due to the pandemic and used these 23 months to give conferences around the world regarding the first circumnavigation of the earth, whose beginning was 500 years old in 1519, departed from the Yacht Club of Miami without a support boat and that is how you will make your entire trip.

“I don’t have money for the support ship, it’s dangerous, but I prefer to risk leaving the trip unfinished,” he told Efe surrounded by friends of different nationalities who said goodbye.

In the first phase of the return, Marichalar, who is now 60 years old, toured European ports and crossed the Atlantic helped by a French ship.

He made landfall in Guadeloupe, in the French Antilles, and following touring the other Caribbean islands, he arrived in Miami in the midst of the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic and was forced to leave the “Numancia” out of the water for almost two years.

Now a long and dangerous journey awaits him, which will take him first along the west coast of Florida to Pensacola, founded by his ancestor, Tristán de Luna, in 1559.

It is the first city founded by the Spanish in what is now the United States, although St. Augustine, also in Florida but on the Atlantic coast, is considered the oldest, since Pensacola was destroyed by a powerful hurricane and had to be refounded in 1698.

COMMUNION ON THE DOCK

Before leaving, Álvaro de Marichalar received a visit from a Presbyterian pastor, the Brazilian Felipe Assis, who exercises his ministry in a temple next to the club, and administered communion, blessed him and applied sacred oils on his forehead and on the Numancia .

Assis, who told Efe that the God of the Presbyterians and Catholics like Marichalar is the same and the ritual has the same effect, made the navigator promise to send him a photograph of each place he visits.

If Marichalar complies, the pastor will have to worry regarding his cell phone memory.

From Pensacola it will go along the US coast of the Gulf of Mexico to Texas, from there to Mexico, it will continue through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica until it reaches Panama, where it will cross through the canal to the Pacific.

It will then sail north up the west coast of the United States to Alaska and across the Bering Strait to Russia and then the Aleutian and Kuril Islands, Japan, the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

It will then skirt the Arabian Peninsula and enter the Red Sea to cross the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean and from there, following touching at various ports, it will arrive in Spain.

© Provided by Agencia EFE

LACK OF SUPPORT AND ALL THE FEAR IN THE WORLD

“I have all the fear in the world,” he said when minutes before leaving, Efe asked him regarding his spirits at the start of this trip, which he hopes will end well into 2023.

His mechanic, Roger Santamaría, a Bilbao resident who lives in Marbella, traveled to Miami to tune up the boat and also said goodbye to him on the dock.

The “Numancia”, a Bombardier with a complementary engine, which gives it a range of regarding 250 miles, bears the inscription on the port side “!! Viva España!!” and on starboard “Around the world 2019”.

The bike is full of stickers and badges from the sponsors of this new challenge of an adventurous sailor with 40 years of experience and several world records.

Surprisingly, none of the sponsors are Spanish, something that Marichalar confessed hurts her.

There is a Maltese cross, a sticker from a Japanese cosmetics company, the initials of the Yacht Club of Monaco, a logo of the Russian Geographical Society and a sticker that says “No finning” next to a shark fin as a way of warning regarding the danger posed to the survival of sharks by cutting their fins.

As a tribute to his homeland, Navarra, in the north of Spain, he wore the regional coat of arms on the back of the blue shirt with which he began this journey.

EVERYTHING HAS HAPPENED TO ME

Before leaving, Marichalar spoke regarding the stains of garbage and plastic found in the oceans and regarding illegal fishing, regarding the need to proudly display Spain’s achievements such as Magellan and Elcano’s circumnavigation of the world – “if we don’t nobody is going to do it” – and to maintain hope and a positive spirit.

He does not like to talk regarding the many mishaps he has had on these trips. “Everything has happened to me,” she said when Efe asked her.

His goal for the next year and a half of his life is to sail an average of 100 miles a day and fulfill his purpose of emulating the mission that the Crown of Spain entrusted to the Portuguese Fernando de Magallanes and the Spanish Juan Sebastián Elcano concluded.

Although he hasn’t set foot in Spain for almost two years, Marichalar shows that he is aware of what is happening in his country.

In his statements to Efe, he dedicated this second phase of the trip around the world to the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Ayuso, who is immersed in a crisis due to an investigation initiated by her own party, the Popular Party, regarding a business purchase of masks from which his brother supposedly benefited.

© Provided by Agencia EFE

Ana Mengotti

(c) EFE Agency