Álex Pella, one of the most important oceanic navigators in the world, a legend in French Brittany, and also unknown in Spain, has proposed following the route of Juan Sebastián Elcano, the first man to circumnavigate the world, ago. 500 years, and circumnavigate the planet in the opposite direction to the traditional one, pointing the bow towards the west, fighting against winds, waves and currents in a journey that hopes to begin in the fall of 2025 and that is expected to last nearly one hundred days. Seven years ago he already broke the world record by heading east, leaving the Capes of Good Hope, Leewin and Hornos on the port side, in what is known as the Jules Verne Trophy, in tribute to the writer who fantasized about a journey for his character. , Phileas Fogg, in 80 days. But Pella and the crew of his trimaran managed, on January 26, 2017, to complete the trip around the world in 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds. A record that no one has been able to beat.
This 51-year-old Catalan has lived in Denia (Alicante) for 20 years. There he found an ideal place to sail, with the Balearic Islands within reach and 300 days of wind, many of them with radiant sun. His career, full of successes and world records, has been developed in France, where his expertise and audacity in ocean racing are highly valued, but he always returns to Denia, where his wife, Lena, and his children are now waiting for him. five and four years old, Alba and Álex. They, innocent as the children they are, look at the world map they have at home and cannot understand the feat their father is pursuing. There, in the Denia Marina, the MaxiCat Victoria is moored, a competition boat that was in the hands of a sheikh in the Middle East and that Pella has recovered to tackle this project. It is a huge multihull with a giant mast, an endless 41-meter mast, as tall as a 12-story building.
Pella did not have a very orthodox background, from a yacht club and dinghy sailing; He got to know sailing on the ‘Pepus’, the modest sailboat of his parents, Nacho and Cristina, a man who worked as a decorator at TVE and the employee of a travel agency. They named the ship with the nickname of his father’s deceased brother. There, standing on the pole or running around in the bathtub, the four brothers played: David, Álex, Borja and Nacho. The family spent the summers in Begur, a small town on the Costa Brava, and they left by boat from Sa Riera cove. When he was at home, little Alex, the second of the four brothers, liked to read the adventures of great sailors, such as Bernard Moitessier, a wanderer of the seas, a man who gave up victory in a great solo regatta to be able to extend your journey. “I was amazed by these guys who did those planetary regattas with the energy of the wind. “How beautiful this is!”
He has always liked history and after the pandemic he discovered that it was going to be 500 years since the first trip around the world. Then he began to read about the lives of Ferdinand Magellan, the man who began that adventure in search of the Especiería or the spice island, as captain of five ships that left Seville on August 10, 1519; and Juan Sebastián Elcano, who completed it with a single ship and 18 of the 239 crew members who took to the sea. Between September 20, 1519, the day they cast off from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and September 8, 1522, when the battered ship ‘Victoria’ docked in the Cadiz port – it arrived so damaged that it had to be towed to Seville by the Guadalquivir – everything happened to them: terrifying storms, attacks by the Portuguese, mutinies, hunger and diseases that reduced the crew.
Magellan died in the battle of Mactán in 1521 and that is why Elcano ended up in command, who was the one who managed to complete the trip around the world. That earned him a generous allowance from King Charles I, 500 gold ducats a year, and a coat of arms crowned with an orb on which the legend ‘Primus circumdedisti me’ (You were the first to turn me around) is read. “It is exciting; It’s incredible how far they came. Spanish exploration is not valued, it is very unknown in Spain and on top of that it suffers from the black legend and the Saxons hide its history. “Elcano was a great sailor who, despite having that annuity, decided to embark on another trip around the world that cost him his life.”
Álex Pella wants to emulate Elcano with the new ‘Victoria’, a competition boat made with carbon fiber and very sustainable. The catamaran will recycle sails adapted from another boat. “And we will manufacture the water with the energy we make with the solar panels and the wind system.” A “beast”, as the sailor says, 33 meters long and 17 meters wide. A 21-ton ship to sail the oceans ‘against the current’, spending days with more than 40 degrees and very high humidity in the Equator, and others – although they seek the southern summer – with temperatures below zero and avoiding the ice sheets near the antartida.
Just after the pandemic, Pella already tried it on another boat and another project, but ended up crashing into the rocks in Cook Bay, Chile, just past Cape Horn. Now the project is his and he has taken the “shot” to choose his crew. His right-hand man will be a 61-year-old French veteran, Lalou Roucayrol. “He is a legend and we understand each other without speaking, just a look is enough.” Two young people, 21 and 22 years old, who leave Las Palmas and Denia, Alejandro Cantero – who worked in the Lalou shipyard – and Alberto Muñoz – naval engineer. Another sailor and a reporter will be missing. Because Pella does not forget that, alongside Magellan and Elcano, Antonio Pigafetta traveled, the man who wrote the story of this adventure in the diaries that miraculously survived. The story of an exploit that changed history, navigation routes, knowledge about fauna and botany, and even the confirmation of Aristotle’s theory, which stated that the Earth was a sphere. “It is said, in fact, that that first trip around the world was also the first step towards globalization,” adds Pella.
The skipper has looked for good sailors, but, above all, “calm, polite and respectful” people. Experience tells you that these types of projects usually fail due to the human factor. “It’s going to be a hundred days in a very small space, and that’s complicated.” Technology, nowadays, allows him to be as connected as he wants, but Álex Pella is old school and prefers to be focused on the sea. Once every four days he will talk to his wife, who will leak all the information to him. In his luggage, the essentials. Every four or five days, a hygiene session – shower with sea water and a liter of fresh water to remove the salt, and a shave – to boost morale. “The sailor, when he is in that state, he is like an animal, a wild being.”
80% of the food will be natural and only 20% will be freeze-dried. “Pasta, rice and legumes because food, in addition to the caloric intake, has other values and sitting together to eat is important.” Not much more. An mp3 with music to disconnect in the bunk. A book that you will either devour in four days or won’t finish in 100. And a few bottles of wine to uncork when you cross the Equator or round the fearsome Cape Horn. The rest, a hundred-day fight against the sea in which they will not have to get their passport. “The sea is the last free space on the planet,” highlights Pella.
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