Aurora Canessa can look back and say she lived a thousand lives: she was a motorcycle racer, a skydiver, the captain of her own ship, founded companies, took to the sea, and explored the distance on hundreds of voyages. She sailed to the Falkland Islands on the tenth anniversary of the war in 1992 and won the traditional 500-mile Río de la Plata race. But perhaps most importantly—so far—she was the first Argentine woman to cross the Atlantic solo aboard her sailboat, Shipping, at the age of 65.
After her mother’s death, with no children or husbands to tie her to Buenos Aires, she decided to sail the world: she returned ten years later, in 2020, just as the city was preparing to close all its ports due to the COVID-19 epidemic. However, she wasn’t intimidated: “All my life I’ve guided myself by intuition, never by my brain, by my mind. It was always something that came from my gut, from within, and then—many years later—when I began to study, I understood that it was the chakra of creativity. But I didn’t know that back then.”
Now, this brave, indomitable, curious woman—who celebrated her eightieth birthday at the end of last September—has just returned from a trip across Patagonia, Argentina, aboard a motorhome, while planning her next voyage and getting excited with an easy laugh and a spirit that inspires the desire to explore the world’s seas, which Aurora knows like the back of her hand: from the Adriatic Sea and the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic.
How did you get started in sailing?
I started sailing when I was forty. In 1985, I divorced my husband and left home: I changed my princess life. I had married very young, at 20, and started working to feed myself. I had nothing; I was at zero. I had to sell my car, rent an apartment, and start a new life from the one I’d had until then. But my husband and I used to go fishing: my first passion in life was going to the river.
And since what age did you fish?
I lived in Olivos (on the banks of the Río de la Plata) and I’ve been fishing since I was four years old: I was always a fisherman and always near the water. We went out in a boat, a launch, whatever. After the divorce, when I was able to get a job, when I finally could, I bought a Bermuda SuperSport boat and went fishing. At that moment, a neighbor from the apartment I was renting—and who must have seen me coming and going with my fishing gear every weekend—invited me to a sailing course at the Piedrabuena Club. I took the helmsman’s course, passed, and once I graduated, I decided I had to have my own boat.
Did you like sailing then?
Yes, but I didn’t like sailing on men’s boats. At that time, men were quite sexist, and women didn’t have their own boats. So I bought a Microtonner, an 18-foot sailboat, and started sailing. I sailed and sailed and sailed. I sailed a lot. After a year and a half, I decided to go to the Malvinas Islands. So I paid for that boat and bought a wooden boat, the Malabar, a classic, and with that, I started making other voyages. From that little boat, I never stopped until today: I’ve been sailing for more than 40 years.
What was the life of a female sailor like in those years?
At that time, there were very few women: it wasn’t until I had that small boat that I was invited to a women’s regatta, which started around that time, but there were only one or two boats. They were always the father’s or husband’s boats; there were no women with their own boats.
What were the most important journeys in these forty years?
One of the most important was that trip to the Falkland Islands. We achieved what I wanted: to be in Puerto Argentino in 1992, the tenth anniversary of the South Atlantic War, singing the National Anthem with our four-by-two flag flying from the stern of the Malabar (which was my ship at the time). We also delivered 300 letters with messages from Argentine children to children in the Falkland Islands. When I returned from that trip, I began to gain a little more recognition in the local nautical world.
You also competed in races like the “500 miles of the Río de la Plata,” which is one of the toughest and most demanding.
For nine years, I competed in the championship as a double, arriving a day and a half late. Everyone was dying of laughter. Until one day I won the 500 Miles of the Río de la Plata: it was the first time in the history of that competition that a woman had taken first place. At that time, I had a boat that was the little Shipping: a Krypton 27. It was a milestone: I won it because I made it, nothing more, because I had the smallest boat, poor thing, but because everyone else dropped out along the way. There were 23 or 24 boats of the best sailors in the Río de la Plata, and they all dropped out in the middle of the race. The YCA had to throw me a party and give me the awards: I took the whole table of prizes, but only because I had made it.
And then what happened?
When I was sailing back from the Falklands voyage, I was alone at the helm, at night, and I asked myself: “And now? What do I want to do, what am I looking forward to?” Then I thought, from the bottom of my gut, intuitively: “Now I want to cross the Atlantic solo.” I was the first woman in Argentina to do so. That thought came in 1992, but I didn’t do it until 18 years later, in 2010. I had to prepare for that for a long time, set up my own company, and figure out how to afford a voyage with those demands.
What ship did you cross the Atlantic on?
In 2005, the Pandora shipyard offered me a boat: they were making a new series and wanted the first sailboats to be for nautical icons in Argentina. “We want you to have one,” the owner of the shipyard, which is one of the most prestigious, told me. I never imagined I’d have a boat like that, a 32-footer, because it’s very expensive, very luxurious, very beautiful. I couldn’t afford the Pandora 320, and things started to fall into place: I was able to sell my old one to a friend who overpaid me for it, they lent me money, and I returned it later. Pandora offered me many installments; they helped me a lot so I could have that boat. I always did everything on my own.
What were your routines like, for example, during the Atlantic crossing? What were your sleeping patterns, meals, and schedules like for the 3,550 miles (about 6,500 kilometers)?
I left in 2010: I was 65 years old when I left the port of Olivos, near Buenos Aires, in April of that year. In September, I turned 66 and crossed the Atlantic. During the crossing itself, I slept every 20 minutes: 20 minutes awake and another 20 minutes asleep, I set a wake-up clock, and so on.
It took me two months in total: I traveled the entire coast of Brazil, the Caribbean, the Antilles, all the way north. When I reached the last island in the northwest, Saint Maarten, from there I continued to Bermuda. I stayed there for a full week to refuel, find supplies, water, and sleep. It’s about 600 miles in total on that stretch to the Azores (where I also stopped for another week), in the middle of the ocean, where I continued my journey to Europe.
How is forecasting done on ocean voyages?
At that time, and now a bit too, I sailed almost without instruments. I don’t navigate with technology. I only used a small GPS that gave me my position. I even had nautical charts printed on paper, and with that GPS, I marked them as I sailed. I didn’t have a plotter, nothing at all. A friend who called me once, twice, or three times a day had a satellite phone, and we communicated to check on me. After crossing the Atlantic, I spent 10 years sailing all the seas of Europe: I lived on my boat and traveled all over the water. I only returned in March 2020.
Your life is a complete book: do you keep travel logs?
Yes, at the time I kept a log of that trip, which is published on the ADAN Association website. I encountered two hurricanes. I wondered what the need was for me to be here, cold, wet, hungry, sleepy. Especially sleepy. But communication and the entire team that supports the journey are very important: family, friends, other sailors.
What is the work you do at the ADAN Association?
I was one of the founding members twenty years ago. Now I’m the president of ADAN (Argentine Sports Association of Sailors): I’ve appointed many delegates around the world. Now that I’ve gone south with the truck, I’ve appointed four or five in different provinces. It’s a non-governmental organization, providing assistance to all sailors around the world where we have a delegate.
It’s an important function, with a network of support for sailors who reach the coast and need someone to hold the line when they dock. I experienced this during those ten years in Europe. There’s also outreach work to keep the memory and history of dozens of Argentine sailors alive.
What are your next plans?
One of my biggest milestones was turning eighty. I achieved it. A few days later, I was taking a shower (no meditative state, he laughs) and it occurred to me: I’m eighty, now what am I going to do? I’ve already figured out what to do. The bar’s a little high, but I hope I can do it. I don’t want to say anything else for now.
What are the main precautions a person should take for voyages of this type? How are you preparing for upcoming trips?
I take care of myself, eat healthy, do Pilates, and also Reiki. I organize routines to stay healthy and strong. I already have a goal for my next challenge, and I hope to achieve it. I’ll do everything possible to achieve it: I’ve already started preparing my ship for that, because everything takes time and energy. The most valuable thing happening to me right now is recognizing my capabilities: being humble enough to know that I don’t have the strength of someone who’s sixty or forty. I do my best to stay healthy.
My happiness lies in having a purpose and pursuing it.
From “Navegantes Oceánicos” we would like to thank Aurora Canessa, whom we greatly admire, for her collaboration in this fascinating interview.
We wish Aurora the best of luck and “Fear winds and followings seas” in her future projects.
You can get more information in the following links:
Asociación Deportiva Argentina de Navegantes: https://adan.org.ar/tag/nav-aurora-canessa/
Instagram “El viaje de Aurora”: https://www.instagram.com/canessaaurora/?hl=es
YouTube Aurora Canessa: https://www.youtube.com/@AURORACANESSA
