Santiago de Compostela, 8 a.m.

It is raining outside the plane; we are taking off. On the window, the water drops stretch horizontally under the pressure. Their pattern looks like ocean waves. My thoughts float back in time, back to the last fifteen days I have spent on Lady Magellan. Fifteen days of sailing from La Rochelle to Ribadeo to explore the northern coast of Spain and to learn the ways of the ocean with patience and respect.

Paola (Catapano), the captain of the boat, is putting together an all-women crew to participate in the ARC Atlantic crossing, leaving from the Canaries to the Antilles in November 2026. She has invited me to train with her, get accustomed to the boat, and share the pure excitement of flying over the water. Her project is ambitious: the boat is 13.9 metres long and 20.5 metres high, a racer–cruiser that, according to the experts we meet in the port of La Rochelle (the largest port in Europe), is much more a “racer” than a “cruiser.” Compared to other boats I have sailed on, it is bigger, more powerful, and requires considerable strength to manoeuvre. Understanding its engineering tricks is therefore essential to make navigation smoother – for example, the ballast system that fills a 650-litre reservoir on either side when the boat heels too much. 

The sailing plan this time round is to hop on board Lady Magellan in La Rochelle to join Paola, Mike, and Kevin on their way down from Bretagne. The weather conditions in La Rochelle prevent us from leaving straight away: we are stuck for four days in the huge French port under the rain, waiting for the white waves on the horizon to calm down. What to do? Well, first, learn to be patient. Sailing reminds us that nature sets the schedule, not us. Waiting for the right moment to depart becomes part of the beauty: sharing stories and meals with the crew, seeking advice from port neighbors, and connecting with the local sailing community. Second, there is always something to fix! The boat is like a living being. Salt water and strong winds are unforgiving – sails delaminate or tear, wind sensors at the masthead go blind, refrigerators freeze over, oil filters demand replacement. We end up spending days unmounting, cleaning, and greasing the six winches, uncovering their elegant mechanism made of screws, bolts, bearings, pawls, and gears. While in La Rochelle, we also organise a meeting with Vladimir Charles, the captain of the 33 Export, the first French monohull which won a stage of the mythic “Whitbread Round The World Race” in 1977. He officially joins PolarQuest’s Fleet4Science, a group of sailing vessels committed to gathering valuable scientific data during their expeditions. Vladimir is the embodiment of the sea: his face is carved by the wind, and his hands are thick and weathered. He has spent only two years of his life on land – the rest at sea. To the question pounding in our minds, the only real fear of the trip – “What about orca attacks? Shall we be worried about them?” – he answers calmly that the animals mostly target boats overloaded with electronics: Starlink, autopilots, radios, sonars… all the modern instruments that make sailing too easy. He sails the old way, guided only by a compass, a barometer, and paper charts. That evening, after speaking with him and visiting his boat, we edit a short video (link) on board to capture the moment. We also contact Elena Valsecchi, biology professor at the Milano Bicocca University, to ask whether we could collect water samples along the northwestern Spanish coast – where most orca sightings have occurred – in order to analyse their environmental DNA, a project that has already been carried out by PolarQuest’s fleet.

Orcas mostly target boats overloaded with electronics: Starlink, autopilots, radios, sonars… all the modern instruments that make sailing too easy.

Little did I know I would have my own zero-gravity experience onboard Lady Magellan a few days later. We are sailing against 37 knots of wind and 3-metre waves, and I am in charge of shifting the ballast from one side of the boat to the other each time we tack. This means going below deck to activate the pump. I get mesmerized by the portholes slipping underwater; the deep turquoise light – so calm, so quiet compared to the storm outside – distracts me, and I forget to properly hold myself. Suddenly, my feet lift from the floor. The cabin rotates around me, and for a breathless instant I float weightless before crashing against the far wall, wondering how I am not hurt anywhere.

For the day, our navigation stops earlier than expected in Gijón, to resume the following day. The mission is to cross Cabo de Peñas and Cabo Negro under similar conditions. We encounter no other boats – only scattered plastic debris and what at first glance seem like transparent plastic bags but are in fact dangerous Portuguese Man o’ War jellyfish, floating on the water’s surface. As we round Cabo Negro, we notice an unusually large, abandoned building looming over the cliff. It is a defunct funicular, built solely to dump the enormous quantities of waste generated by the Avilés steelworks directly into the sea until the early 1970s. In fact, arriving at our destination for the night, Avilés, we are struck by the sheer size of asphalt piles and industrial machinery lining the channel to the port – a channel painstakingly excavated by hand decades ago to make way for industrial activity. The place feels gloomy, its inhabitants unnervingly enthusiastic… perhaps the result of too much time breathing toxic chemicals?