Maria Intxaustegi Molina. Photography: Richard Simko
Underwater archaeologist, professional diver, naval historian, expedition guide and ocean navigator, Maria Intxaustegi has just arrived in Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego – Argentina), after having completed her last sailing and Antarctic expedition, on board the sailing ship Bark Europa. The Bark Europa, flying the Dutch flag, is an exceptional brigantine sailing ship, a three-masted tall ship, 56 metres long, with a capacity for 50 people, which carries out expeditions and oceanic navigations all over the world. It also collaborates in measuring and recording data at sea.
Maria Intxaustegi has received the Ibero-American Sea Award ‘Cortes de Cádiz’ 2015 for her research work, and has also been awarded by the Sociedad Geográfica La Exploradora. Today, she is a reference as a researcher, archaeologist and ocean navigator.
We would like to thank Maria in advance for sharing her experiences with us in this exciting interview.
Maria, your relationship with the sea began when you were very young. How did you start in the world of sailing?
I became interested in sailing at the age of 20 when I was studying history and was already a professional diver. I didn’t know anyone with a sailboat but I was amazed by them, I saw them leaving the harbour and I wanted to get on one of them and sail with the wind, but it is an expensive sport and my resources were destined to my studies. Since I couldn’t learn in a practical way, I started to study recreational sailing qualifications on my own, if I could do it. I knew motor boats well, but once I discovered sailing, and especially square-rigged sailboats, I instantly fell in love and, in fact, I directed my academic research to the study of these boats during the Modern Era. Subsequently, I became a deep-sea skipper and started skippering all types of sailboats. I still do it exceptionally well today.
Archaeology, nature and sailing are some of your great passions, how do you combine them, which one do you prefer?
All three are intimately related. We ourselves are nature and we live on a blue planet misnamed ‘Earth’; our human history has developed along with ships, that characteristic element of any civilisation near the coast that represented the greatest technological advance in constant evolution. Not only people were transported on a ship, but with them went their revolutionary ideas and knowledge. Entire empires have been created and destroyed with the sea as a common thread. I study these three components: archaeology, nature and navigation together and interrelated. That’s why I couldn’t choose just one.
On board the Bark Europa, you have several tasks, you are a navigator and expedition guide. What would you highlight about your work in a natural environment such as Antarctica?
My main role on board is to guide the passengers who embark with us on our voyages around Antarctica and sub-Antarctic islands such as South Georgia and the Falklands. Together with the captain, we draw up an itinerary that we alter 7689 times depending on the extreme and changeable weather, in order to show the most spectacular corners of an absolutely breathtaking continent.
While sailing the Southern Ocean, I divide my time between giving talks on wildlife, polar history, oceanography, etc. to the passengers so that they can learn about the continent, etc. to the passengers so that they know the natural and historical context in which we move, but let’s not forget that we are sailing in a square-rigged boat with a rigging that we have to know how to handle and sails that we have to know how to fold in very extreme conditions, so I also carry the sailing manoeuvres that require many hands and ‘climbers’ who quickly climb the topsails to be able to safely fold or unfurl the sails.
Once we arrive at the selected points of interest, I take them by zodiak to see iceberg cemeteries up close, leopard seals hidden among the ice shelves and, if conditions permit, I disembark them to walk with me among penguin rookeries, albatross colonies, glaciers, abandoned whaling stations…
“It’s a 24/7 job”
It is a difficult, strenuous, overwhelming, stressful and responsible job that one carries on one’s shoulders to keep everyone safe and sound while I show them the wonders of those parts. But what I would really emphasise is how wonderful and utterly satisfying it is to lead such expeditions, with the best of crews and with our mistress of the seas, the Europa, sailing as Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton did in their time. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
In 2020 you experienced the beginning of the COVID pandemic on board the Bark Europa, and you made a very long voyage of more than 80 days to return to the Netherlands. What was that voyage like?
I wrote a book about that voyage which, if all goes well, will soon be published. Honestly, between being on land locked up in my house or doing what I love the most, which is sailing, on the boat I love the most and with an exceptional crew for who knows how long?
The answer is simple: The sailing was wonderful.
It was a unique voyage in exceptional circumstances that will never be repeated and that I treasure in my memories with great affection. Planning from Ushuaia to Holland without fuel, only under sail, analysing the prevailing winds used by the same captains on the Clipper route in the 19th century… Taking meridians with the sextant to check our position with the chart in case the GPS stopped working… It was sailing the way I like it, traditionally: Guided by the winds, the sun and the stars.
What is the best moment you have experienced on board a sailing boat, and the worst, any storm?
This is a recurring question I am often asked and it always makes me laugh because I don’t know any good sailor who dislikes the wind. When I explain the weather forecasts, I don’t talk about gales but about wind, more wind, swell, or more swell.
My fear is not an abundance of wind but the opposite, the absence of wind. In the Southern Ocean, north of the Falklands, I was once immersed in a low pressure of over a thousand miles in amplitude that had me living in a constant washing machine for 8 days with 50 knot winds, 70 knot gusts and 8 metre waves. But how we sailed! We got through the roaring 40s in a heartbeat and watching the boat, heeled and with minimal sail, reach 10 knots and ride the waves happily was worth all the discomfort.
But, on the other hand, I have been stuck in the Doldrums, the northern hemisphere calms in the tropical zone close to the equator for days, without moving and sometimes even going backwards because of some counter-current that was pushing us. That is really hopeless, that day and night heat that doesn’t even cool you down by jumping into the water and every time you open your eyes and go up on deck you see yourself in the middle of a huge puddle without a single cloud.
One of my best moments that I think I will never forget was anchoring in the Strait of Magellan while waiting for the pilot. It was 4am local time and I was on watch, we climbed into the topsails to fold up all the sails and prepare them for arrival in port and, with a new moon giving way to a completely starry sky, a pod of Commerson’s dolphins that had eaten bioluminescent plankton began to play around us. Suddenly we were surrounded by a score of phosphorescent dolphins jumping and playing.
But I couldn’t really pick just one moment: the laughter of complicity among the crew during the coffee break, the ice guards up at 37 metres on the mainmast as I point the way through the icebergs and watch the sunrise through the ice…
There are so many, many moments that make me grateful to be where I am!
Maria, on board the Bark Europa the crew belongs to many nationalities, how is the coexistence on board?
It’s absolutely incredible. I think that’s what really sets us apart from other boats, the great complicity and respect we have for our family. Over the years and leading various types of projects, I have discovered that the key to success is always the human factor, to surround yourself not only with good professionals, but above all with good people who have a good rapport with each other so that we all row together in the same direction. And we do it, we really do it.
‘I couldn’t be prouder of each and every one of them’
You have sailed as skipper on other cruising yachts and charters in the Mediterranean, what has this experience been like?
Very exceptionally I still do it because I love it and I know the Mediterranean very well. I like sailing, I like dealing with the client, teaching them not only about sailing but also about the history of the civilisations that previously sailed these same waters, some coves or places that only those of us who have been in the sector for a long time know about…
I also do boat transfers for clients or recommendations from former important clients with whom I still keep in touch and who trust me to transfer their boats or look after them for a certain period of time.
Being a private skipper is also an exhausting job because in the standard I used to work with and the type of client I had, everything had to be exquisite. But I enjoy doing a good job, working as a team to win a regatta in Porto Cervo or simply taking a catamaran to the Caribbean.
A bit of naval history. 500 years ago, the Basque sailor Juan Sebastián de Elcano completed the first round-the-world voyage. What inspires you about this great navigator, and which period in the history of sailing do you like the most?
I have to admit that, however much of my countryman he may be and however excellent a navigator he may have been (which is undoubtedly true), I am of the Magellan team. It was Magellan who collected charts and maps for years in Portugal, secretly plotting what was to be his great plan. It was Magellan who sailed the unknown seas, when he died in Mactan (Philippines) and Elkano took over, he only had to follow a well-known navigable route. Elkano faced innumerable dangers and his feat was admirable, but it was Magellan who drew up the plan and faced the unknown seas and the southern ocean. And I, who know these latitudes very well and who have crossed the strait several times, can only admire the fact that he succeeded.
I like anything to do with objects that float and are propelled by sails. As well as being a sailor, I am a scientist and professionally research historical periods or moments in the history of sailing. I like to dive into a subject, give it my all, publish my results and then move on to another. It keeps my motivation and curiosity, key elements in research, at full throttle. I have spent 3 years researching the Havana shipyard during the 18th century and its naval architecture, then I have moved on to researching lithic anchors, I have carried out excavations on wrecks (sunken ships) from the Baltic to the United States… And now I am more interested in the human footprint we have left in the southern ocean.
Back to archaeology, you have written the book ‘Anclas líticas en el País Vasco’ and received, among others, the Premio del Mar 2015 for your research work. What do these discoveries consist of?
Oxford University’s BAR Publishing praised the catalogue and research developed on lithic anchors and published the entire manuscript for me. Academically speaking, that alone is a great achievement. In this book I analyse and catalogue 112 lithic, i.e. stone, anchors found on the seabed in the province of Guipúzcoa. It should be borne in mind that the lithic anchor is considered a mainly Mediterranean nautical element and that such a large number of them have been found in such a small territory, some even with inscriptions, indicates that perhaps this technological transmission has been a logical evolution achieved by different cultures. This book is a first small step to advance in their study.
I was awarded the Ibero-American Cortes de Cádiz prize for my Master’s thesis on the Havana shipyard where I analysed its spatial evolution, its transformation into a real arsenal and how the ships built there, beyond the exceptional quality of the tropical woods, were built in the ‘colonial’ manner without following the indications of the engineers of the metropolis. It was a precious and very interesting investigation.
Maria, to finish, and looking to the future, what projects or navigations do you have on the bow?
I have a busy but very exciting year ahead of me. In April I start working with National Geographic Expeditions and will embark with them as a historian and underwater specialist on several expeditions in Northern Europe and the Baltic. In the summer I will be working for the University of West Florida on an archaeological project on the sunken fleet of Tristan de Luna. You will see me with the Bark Europa in Cadiz in September at the Tall Ship Races and by autumn I have a couple of research and expeditions in mind but they are not yet closed.
‘I only have one life and I want to make the most of it’
From ‘Bluewater Sailors’ we would like to thank Maria Intxaustegi for her collaboration and for sharing with all of us her exciting experiences, work, explorations and sailing on the Bark Europa.
We offer her our sincere congratulations for her successes and wish her the best of luck in her next projects.
The authors of the photographs in this article are Maria Intxaustegi and Richard Simko.
