Interview with a Cruiser: NDS Evolution

From 2014 to 2015, Alejandro, together with his wife Maria José, daughter Lucia and son Tomás, circumnavigated the globe as part of the WorldARC sailing rally aboard their Lagoon 62 catamaran, NDS Darwin.  Their experience from that trip inspired them to commission NDS Evolution, an 85′ catamaran built in aluminum by JFA Yachts in France.  This past summer, Alejandro and Maria José sailed the new boat down to Antarctica; they’re now prepping for a second trip to the South Pacific and beyond.

If you are at all interested in boats, it’s worth the time to check out more pictures of  NDS Evolution and a timelapse video of the build itself.  While the pictures and video are impressive, after a tour we can safely say that they don’t do justice to the quality and workmanship on the boat.

We talked with Alejandro aboard NDS Evolution while enjoying cookies and some of his large port collection, and Maria José and Lucia joined us via a video link.

For a sample of the conversation, just click play below:

 

Where are you from?

Lucia: Argentina – the best country on earth!  (Lots of laughing…)  We live in the suburbs of Buenos Aires; it’s fifty kilometers (30 miles) away from the capital.

What did you do for work before you went sailing?

Alejandro: At the time that we started our circumnavigation, we owned an energy company – a big one that we sold right after we finished our trip.  We finished our circumnavigation in May 2015, and in December 2015 we sold to an American investment fund.  We decided to sell the company while we were in Cape Town, South Africa.

Maria José: I said that we must think about such an important decision.  We had been sailing around South Africa for many weeks, with very strong winds, very stressful.  So we needed some peace – some place to think quietly.  So we went to a hotel in the marina, a very nice one.  We went there to talk about selling the company.

Alejandro: In November 2014, an American fund said they are interested to buy the company.  So we said make a proposal.  Then one night in the suite in the hotel, Maria Jose and I said “Ok!”

And then, we re-invested just in solar.  Now we have a  pure solar company.

Tell us about your boat.

Lucia: I will tell you my opinion – this boat is way too technological for me.  It’s way too big; it’s a lot.  I preferred our last boat.  I was always against this boat.  (Lot’s of laughing…)  I’ve never sailed long trips in it, so I need to get used to it.  But for my parents, they love it.  I would rather have a small, tiny monohull.

Angie: Well you can come with us, and then you may change your mind! (Lots of laughing…)

Alejandro: This boat is the consequence of all our experience with NDS Darwin.  The first decision, as we would like to sail in Antarctica, was to build the boat in aluminum.  The second decision was for a catamaran, and if you decide to have a catamaran in an aluminum hull, there are not very many shipyards who can build a boat like this.  We found a shipyard in France with experience with catamarans and aluminum.

Maria José will remember, when I was discussing the price to sell the company with the American fund, they start to talk about the risk of the deal.  I gave them some guarantee about the success of the project, but then increased the price of the sale by exactly the amount of the new boat.  So the boat was paid for by the American fund.  We sold the company, and one week later we signed the contract to build this boat.

As Lucia says, this boat is a little bit complicated.  It’s complicated from the point of view of technology, yes, but it’s well done.  So far after two years of sailing, almost 25,000nm, the problems are very few.

This boat is an 85’ catamaran, with a beam of 36’.  Draft is 2m, or 6.5’.  Two engines, 400HP Yanmar each.  Carbon boom and mast from Lorima.  The new technology of the sail with Kevlar and carbon fiber.  From the sea level, the mast is 38m (125’) high.

It’s true what Lucia says, there is technology everywhere.  There’s even a load management system to measure the strain on the rigging, the hydraulic system for the winches and furlers, from the communication point of view there’s satellite high speed internet.  We have the owners cabin plus three guest cabins and crew quarters – we can have 13 people on board comfortably.

The ideal to sail comfortably is 4 people.  We sailed the boat with just 2 people no problem – the watches are just a little bit longer.  With two people you can handle all of the sail maneuvers no problem.

Lucia: I think 6 people in total is ideal.  Then you can divide better the watches and you have a backup if someone gets seasick.  People still get seasick on this boat.

How did you choose the name of your boat?

Maria José: I want to start with the name of our last boat.  We wanted to show the kids that if they don’t have any needs, they won’t develop skills to solve problems.

Lucia: Can I explain it? So, the trip around the world it was with us too, my little brother and myself.  The objective of the trip was to teach us how to develop our skills.  Here at home, we have everything served to us.  The idea was for us to develop our skills to meet our needs.

So the new boat is much more broad than the other one.  So this one is called NDS, for Needs Develop Skills, and Evolution, because it’s the evolution from NDS Darwin.

Did I explain myself?  I’m sorry, I used to be really good at speaking in English.  I haven’t had any practice.

When you first decided to go sailing, what did your friends and family think?

Lucia: That we were insane, that our Dad was out of his mind.  (Lots of laughing…)  No one believed that we could do it, first of all.  They said, “One month, two months, you will be back home”.  We had a period of time, 15 months with the WorldARC, to do the trip.  So everyone was expecting us not to reach 15 months, to go back home early.  And when we passed the seventh month, the reaction was that people couldn’t believe that we were actually making it.  Even now, no one gets the magnitude of what we did.  Even now, I don’t know if people believe that Dad is going around the world again.

And I think, people who don’t sail can’t really understand what it’s like to live on a boat.  I wish I could show more people how we live – to wake up in a different spot every morning, being in different places all the time, going from anchorage to anchorage, you have sundowners on the beach with people you didn’t know the day before, those feelings are unexplainable.  I don’t think anyone can relate to that.  I wish we could show more people how it feels.  People say that we are stranded on our boat, but you are so much more free than if you are in a house on land.

What do you enjoy about cruising life?

Lucia: I love meeting new people.  I love meeting real sailors.  Being in an anchorage, watching new boats arrive, calling them to invite them to a bonfire on the beach, those feelings are amazing.  And the feeling of arriving after a long crossing in a new place, in a whole different country, with a whole different view, and different people.  I look out of the window and think ”How is this place going to surprise us?”  That is the best.

We sailed with a bunch of boats – it was like a floating neighborhood.

What are the things you miss from living on land?

Alejandro: While sailing, you start to have fewer needs because you are out of the labyrinth of marketing.  As we’ve talked about before, the economy or the market creates your needs.  At the end, you realize that you don’t really need anything.

I miss my friends, so I invite them to come onboard.  We can share a week or a couple of weeks together.  I miss my kids and my grandkids, but then I also invite them to come onboard.  At the end, you can live your next  20 or 15 or 5 years, I don’t know how long I will live, sailing.  I don’t miss work, being important, people calling me all the time.

Lucia: The ease of just grabbing the car and going to get anything you need, I think that is great.  But now that we have a quarantine, we don’t even have that freedom on land.  With the quarantine, as sailors we can relate because it’s like being on a long crossing.  But for this one, you don’t have an ETA.  You don’t know when it’s going to end.

What have been your favorite places so far?

Lucia: It depends.  Cocos Keeling is amazing.  The Bahamas surprised me a lot.  It’s an accessible place – not super far away.  It surprised me.  But I can’t really choose – I have such good memories and experiences from all of them that I can’t decide.

Maria José: I love the Marquesas a lot.  I like the isolated islands like Suwarrow, and also Reunion Island.  Cocos Keeling for me was very nice.  It is a good mix of Occidental and Oriental.

Alejandro: From the point of view of sailng, the South Pacific is the best.  You can have good sailing in Greece, or Croatia, or the Caribbean, but for the right balance between good sailing and amazing places it’s the South Pacific.  It’s isolated, there’s endless beach for you, the people are very friendly without any intention to take advantage, the right balance of all these things is the South Pacific, by far.

What will your route be from here?

Alejandro: I can show you our plan – it’s in this video:

How did you learn to sail?

Lucia: I learned how to sail by sailing.  Once we set sail around the world, I had to learn.  So that’s how I learned.  Now I say that I don’t sail with theory – I sail by watching the sails.  If you ask me what I’m doing I have no idea, but I know what to do.  Before the circumnavigation, we just chartered.  But you know how charters work; you just have everything served to you.  That’s how we learned to sail.  I never ever touched a line before we left on our trip.

On the beginning of our trip around the world, I would get seasick every time.  We would go in small dinghies to fly fish here in the south of Argentina, and I would still get seasick.  So when we started sailing from St Lucia all the way to Panama, I cried and told Dad “What did you make me do?”  I wouldn’t throw up, I would just feel sick.  I would sit on the swim step and cry “No Dad, take me back home”.   On a long crossing, I would take the first two days to get used to it.

Alejandro: But one question: Would you sail again around the world?

Lucia: Yes!

Alejandro: Ahhhhh…. (Lots of laughing…)

Can you tell us about your charity?

Maria José: If this interview were in Spanish, I could speak about it for many hours.  But in English I’ll try to explain.  We had an opportunity to know a village near our home – more or less 20 minutes from here.  Twenty five years ago, when we were building our house, I felt a need to say thank you for the opportunity we had to build a nice house.  At the same time, I knew this very poor village and I thought this is my opportunity, to help them to study, to have a house with dignity, helping about health problems.  So we started by buying a little house and creating a place for kids to stay during the day, and we’ve been doing that for nineteen years now.

The name is Hogar Sagrada Familia del Viso, and the nice thing about this situation is that many kids have been through the program and now have their own families.  Two years ago we had some of them come by to say hello.  One of them had a little girl with him, three years old.  We told him that he could bring his daughter to stay in the house, and he looked at us very seriously and told us that this place is only for children whose parents don’t take care of them, and that he would take care of his little girl.  He saw the reality more than we did.

Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want to share?

Lucia: I hope that we meet somewhere in the world.  We can have some sundowners on the beach, with a bikini.

Angie: Do you really want to see Mike in a bikini? (Laughing…)

Lucia: Also, I am the only daughter that enjoys sailing.

Alejandro: That’s why she has her own cabin!  The cabin on the starboard side, it’s named Lucia!  No other cabin has a name, just Lucia…