Alberto Mir: the dream of arriving sailing to Antarctica

BarcelonaSome people are born to sail. Like Alberto Mir (Barcelona, 1968). Although he studied economics, he couldn't stop thinking about the sea. “When we were little, we used to sail at the Real Club Nàutic de Barcelona, with some wooden optimists. My parents already sailed and my grandfather participated in the dragon class in the Rome Olympic Games of 1960 – he recalls–. I studied economics and had a job at La Caixa. But I wanted to sail around the world. I looked at the map and had a great desire to do it”. And so it was: sailing would be his life. He would look for jobs taking care of boats or moving them from port for many years. And now he is a ship captain and has sailed around the world a few times. Trained at the English Royal Yachting Association, he has helped many people sail around the world. He knows all the coasts, all the seas, and accumulates experiences and anecdotes. The most special, however, was sailing by sailboat to Antarctica, an experience he recounts in the book La Antártida a vela (Nova Casa Editorial, 2026).

“In the world of sailing, we all end up knowing each other, and that’s how I heard that there was a gentleman in Mallorca who was determined to go to Antarctica. After the pandemic, he needed to take a trip like this, and he had enlisted two acquaintances for the experience. But he needed a captain. I already knew the Cape Horn area, so I signed up. I couldn’t say no, it was a fascinating project. We would be four crew members, three who wanted to do it and me as captain. We bought a boat in France and spent a whole year getting it ready, because, being a new boat with many safety systems, it had to be done right,” he recalls. If the project was already for the brave, doing it with a new ship and a crew that didn’t know each other very well added risks. “You can talk to people on land. But until you’re at sea in bad weather, with little sleep, you don’t see what they’re made of,” explains Alberto, a sailor with a calm demeanor and a friendly gaze. “The first year, the ship had a few issues. So we took it to the shipyards in Brittany to fix everything. We also had to request permission from the authorities to make the trip. Not everyone can go there just like that, it’s an international protected area. Imagine if someone had an accident with an oil spill. We managed the permit with the French, who asked us for a very complete dossier.” Having all the paperwork was an adventure. But nothing comparable to what awaited them. “We left from Masnou and made several stops. We went to Masnou, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and finally 500 miles of navigation from Ushuaia to the Antarctic Peninsula. About three or four days of sailing. When you look at where you are on the map... It’s truly going to the ends of the earth,” he confesses.

A bitter aftertaste

“I wanted to go there for the challenge. I had sailed through Polynesia, I knew the Galapagos, beautiful places. And I had been to the south, but not to Antarctica. I wanted to do it with the ice, icebergs and the cold. There you have to be very attentive when sailing to avoid accidents”. In fact, more than beauty, what brought Alberto to those waters was to test himself. “It’s a hostile environment. It pushes you to the limit. It’s hard to sail, it’s hard to heat the boat, you have the cold inside your body. In other areas, if you have a technical problem, you have ports nearby with mechanics. There, no. In fact, the Chilean and Argentine navy, they already tell you, that you are entering an area where assistance is limited or non-existent. It is true that there are scientific bases, but their job is not to help you. If you have a problem, a helicopter cannot reach the continent because they don’t have enough autonomy. They send a notice and try to divert some vessel, but few merchant ships pass through there”, he explains. That landscape is beautiful, but it is also lethal. “If you fall into the water, you can be dead in two minutes. You must always be tied to the deck”, he adds.

Reaching Antarctica from Masnou was a challenge. A learning experience full of surprises. Positive ones, but also negative ones. “I expected it to be more pristine. Because there are areas where you are sailing alone, but suddenly in others you find a large tourist ship with 3,000 people. You even find commercial flights landing in Antarctica. You are there sailing in silence and suddenly you hear a horrible noise. And a plane appears, lands on the snow, and tourists get off. I returned with the feeling that we are destroying Antarctica. There are many scientific bases, some of them giant, like an American one, where they have over a thousand people living, with a cinema and a casino. And a souvenir shop”.

The adventure ended with a bitter taste seeing that they followed all the safety protocol to go ashore, disinfecting the equipment to protect nature, but then they saw Chinese fishing boats fishing in protected areas. “They prefer to pay the fine. The Antarctic Treaty is a piece of paper. There were very beautiful moments, anchoring next to an old, half-sunk whaler, alone, watching whales and penguins. But you also see microplastics, tourists, avian flu... We are destroying the planet,” he concludes.