«I am a sailor, I am not an athlete. In the sea the head counts more, understanding the shape of the wave, reading the cloud that is coming. “You don't learn that in the gym, you learn that by sailing.”
And that's why Alex Pella has been sailing all his life.. He learned to hoist a sail sooner than to walk and at 51 years old he continues every week, practically every day, dancing to the rhythm that the sea proposes to him. Theirs are not the Olympic Games or the Copa América, speed competitions, going around the same bay, theirs are the crossings. And in that specialty, resistance, he has achieved almost everything. In 2017 he set a new record for circumnavigating the world to the east, the so-called Jules Verne Trophy: 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds.. Since then eight teams with the best sailors and the fastest boats in the world have tried to beat him and have not succeeded.. «And in recent years I have asked myself: What do I do now? I can try to lower my record, but it is very, very difficult. In the end I came to the conclusion that it is better to try it the other way,” he explains in conversation with EL MUNDO from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where he is preparing his next challenge.. A challenge that has nothing to do with all the previous ones; This one has invented it.
«The idea is to go around backwards, against the wind and the tides. It's much more difficult, but it has more history. It's like Juan Sebastián Elcano did in the 16th century when he circumnavigated the world for the first time, but until now no one has done it on that route as a sporting challenge.. The objective is to establish a new Trophy, which will be called the Elcano Trophy, and if possible leave a first record of about 100 days.
At the beginning of 2025, Pella will depart with the Frenchman Lalou Roucayrol and the Spanish Alejandro Cantero, Alberto Muñoz and Manuel Maqueda towards Cape Horn, they will cross the Torres Strait that separates Australia and New Guinea, they will reach the Cape of Good Hope and go up the Atlantic back home. «The most difficult will be Cape Horn, in fact the entire stretch between Punta del Este, in Uruguay, and Valparaíso, in Chile.. There are 4,000 miles in which things can get very complicated.. The storms turn and push you, push you. Two years ago I went to investigate, I spent three days anchoring and in the end I ended up on the rocks. They had to rescue me with a tugboat and I was almost repatriated,” says Pella, who has been preparing his project for some time now.. From the boat, the Maxicat Victoria, a rehabilitated multihull that was abandoned for years in Qatar, to the training challenges. Before embarking on a trip around the world, Pella and his team will seek the record for the trip around Spain, from Bilbao to Barcelona in less than a week. Then they will try a demanding crossing across the Atlantic.
Do you never get dizzy? The truth is, no, I have never gotten dizzy.. But I have companions, very good sailors and with a lot of experience, who get knocked out. There are many theories about dizziness, but I understand that what happens to them is a mixture of stress, tiredness, cold, lack of sleep…. I am lucky. If I'm bailing out water and raise my head, I might look a little groggy, but it goes away quickly. “I used to take my grandmother's sofrito.”
With the support of the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sports of the Government of Andalusia, co-financed with European Funds, and sponsors such as Festina, Pella is already reviewing all the details of his next trip around the world. Even the most routine matters. «We will take rotating shifts to sleep and I will take care of eating.. Freeze-dried food is very convenient, it is useful in some situations, but I need to eat. Eat really. We have expanded the kitchen and every day I will make a pot for everyone with pasta, rice, something delicious, something powerful. That gives you a terrifying psychological punch.. When I competed in the Rum Route everyone went with freeze-dried foods and I took my grandmother's sofrito. When you are in the middle of the sea, without connection to land, eating well gives you a lot of advantage,” says the skipper who does not achieve the fame of an Olympic sailing medalist, but is known by all sailors in the world.
«The Games or the Copa América attract my attention, but I would not compete. I like that the rules are set by the sea, not by regulations and judges.. Furthermore, among sailors I feel recognized. The around the world record is something universal. You go to Beijing, London, Jakarta and there is always someone interested in how it was, in how we did it,” says Pella.
When did you discover the sea? I don't even remember. When I was little, with my parents and my brothers [David, Borja and Nacho, all sailors], we went to the Balearic Islands for the summer and spent weeks there on a boat.. It was the 80s, everything was virgin, it was hell. For me that was pure happiness. A swimsuit, a t-shirt, a fishing pole… and that's it. Now I try to transmit that simple life to my children and, in some way, I look for the same in my journeys. This is how I understand the sea.
And, somehow, the sea understands him. Otherwise, it would not have allowed him to break the record for the Jules Verne Trophy, the record for the Tea Route from Hong Kong to London, the record for the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, the Tour of Ireland, the route from New York to Barcelona… Otherwise, I would not allow him to now consider the Elcano Trophy, going around the world in the opposite direction.
«I love this challenge because it has a brutal current component. Elcano and his crew united Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, humanity changed after their trip, it was the beginning of globalization. Today we live the consequences of how development was planned later.
