This is an action-reaction job. You can never stop. In the sea you are in constant danger so, being two on the boat, you always have to be on guard and have an eye for the details.
We are three: my two sisters and I. My sisters never showed any interest for the sea as a profession buy that is because my father and I never encouraged them as it is a too hard of a job.
In a vessel like ours, a 12 metres long one, you are at the water level so when you face a problem it is very different to facing it while being on board of a large fishing vessel where you almost don’t get wet at all. Here, everything is so intense and requires quick responses: when facing a problem, moods and arguments would not solve it.
I am a qualified Civil Engineer, and I finished my studies because getting an education is important. I love it and I carry out projects related to fishing premises but my true vocation is the sea.
Since I was 4 I have gone out sailing with my father and back then I started to learn. I would look at everything that was done on the boat and dreamt of doing it myself one day. To me, the sailors were like gods carrying out wonderful things, and I admired them and wanted to be like them. I watched, learnt and suddenly I found myself carrying out tasks on board.
I wouldn’t quit working in the sea for a post as an Engineer. Every day, while on the boat, you are somebody, and everything depends on you. In an engineering company you are just another number. It is the sea where I really feel comfortable.
My best day at the sea is when I can enjoy the outcome of a job well done. I remember with joy an occasion in which we had an area full of buoys entangled and we had to spend a whole week trying to fix that mess, being such a hard physical effort that I almost faint one day. But we left the area in perfect condition and, thanks to that, a few days later we captured right there heaps of Horse-mackerel. If we had not done that good job, fishing those fish would had been impossible.
When I was studying my degree, going out in the sea for a while was the best way to leave behind the stress of the exams. One of those days when I was taking a break from studying and I went out to the sea with my father and my uncle, we caught 700 kilo of fish.
The wind, when it blows hard, can get to frighten you. Once, I was 15 or 16 years old, we sailed to Veneguera to catch bait and around 11 or midnight we were sailing back to Agaete under a storm so powerful that I ‘heard the wind speaking’, as it seemed to me a voice.
