Years ago, during Holy Week, a multitude of white sails fills the Mediterranean heading for Ibiza. The Ruta de la Sal, the offshore regatta with the most sailors in the Mediterranean, has been moving thousands of sailboats for over thirty years, participating in a competition born to commemorate a forgotten historical event. In 1846, when the Carlists managed to blockade Barcelona during the First Carlist War, a Barcelona businessman offered money to all sailors who volunteered to go to Ibiza to fetch salt and bring it to Barcelona, as it was running out. It is said that a schooner named Halcón Maltés, captained by the Greek Andrea Potrus, was the fastest to break the blockade.

"After so many months sailing such a tiny boat, my mind is still sailing. My head's still not on the ground, if you know what I mean," explains Pilar Pasanau (Barcelona, ​​1968), speaking by phone from Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean. At 58, the Barcelona native recently finished fourth in the Mini Globe Race, a solo round-the-world race in boats under six meters long. Her boat, the 5.80-meter Peter Punk, covered a total of 24,000 nautical miles, more than 44,000 kilometers, in 191 days. "I'm in a very sweet, very pleasant emotional, mental, and physical equilibrium. I would love to be like this for the rest of my life, that is, with total control of myself," explains the first woman in the final standings of a race created in 2020 by Australian adventurer Don McIntyre, who envisioned diving from a boat. For now, she remains in Antigua as she needs to find the money to ship the boat back home. In love with the sea, Pilar didn't hesitate to go into debt to make her dream a reality. "It was now or never. We'll pay them back," she says with a smile.