The night, when we still did not know what that was going to last, we received in the group, when the coverage returned, a message from the president, Cristina: “Annex”, with photos of the final part of the novel. The annex is in most editions, and it is a glossary of sailor terms – “Torrotito”, “Overjute”, “Chinchorro” or “Grimpola” are some of my favorites, for how they sound – that helps reading and leads to the imagination for the seven seas.
What peace of spirit you have to have, I told myself, to be thinking about this vocabulary in the midst of chaos and anxiety. But I quickly remembered that I had scrutinized this annex for another moment of agony: it was in the pandemic when, in full overwhelming, I went and returned to this novel. The concretion of the terms and mystery they kept gave me a truce.
I have always liked ships and the sea. Although the exploitation of the coast has removed this world from most pockets, and has booked the waters to the exuberance of the superyates. The roar of the engines has never interested me much. The silence of the candles and the creak of the wood, or only see its silhouette from afar, leads to an impossible imaginary: the trades that are lost, with all their vocabulary and gestures, the adventures of those who were at the time they were considered as astronauts – as the erebus, the terror and other large exploration ships – or the alternative life of the lonely sailors from the sixties.
Moby Dick He achieved his mission, and from there this taste became obsession. I grew up the books of navigators like Bernard Moitessier and I saw all the YouTube videos of crazy people who decide to build a canoe or a ship with the hope of escaping the worldly noise. I went to see, in Pasiaia, and I was stunned. And when I get bored I will greet the Santa Eulàlia. If there are people dedicated with passion to a way of living the nearby, open and inclusive sea, because you work it yourself, could I?
I found the answer under the bridge in the port of Badalona. There a few years ago a small group of people decided to build an auxiliary boat for the Quetx City of Badalonathe ship-school ship that manages the association of the same name. The great wooden ship, with two sticks and wine candles that have sailed all over the world, needed a chinchorro: they baptized him as KateTo date, the only ship that has made the Aixa association, dedicated to the construction and navigation of traditional ships.
Aixa takes his name from the main tool of the Ribera carpenter. In Catalonia the Aixa masters They are still active, they have the fingers of one hand, and, they are less than in Galicia or Euskadi.
“The Catalan maritime heritage is almost extinguished. In part because when the fishermen and the people who lived from the sea wanted to change their vessels, they were forced to discourage the old one,” explains Santi, one of the partners. Why dedicate yourself to this? “I have always liked to build things, I love wood and sea,” he says. “Each ship has a story that says something of us,” add Xavi and Carles, two other members of Aixa. There they are in reconstruction, among others, the Guilovaa fishing boat assigned by a family of Badalona, or the Pueblothe auxiliary ship that ended up shipwrecked in a tragic accident in Cornwall in 1995.
In Aixa, the first thing that surprises is the ease and boldness with which any task is undertaken: no one is professional, but there are no tacas, notebooks, defenses, rigging or pulleys that resist the willingness to find a way to achieve the goal. In this self -managed workshop – the association is in search of a final place, and the City Council would do well in not losing this treasure – this “orientation towards the solution” is palpated that, everyone who is dedicated to the sea has.
There is a lot of cheerful philosophy in Aixa: they are the sailors of Theseus who were renewing the pieces of their ship others, is it the same ship if all its pieces change? They are the Argonauts willing to make unknown routes trusting that we have all riveted the nails well and plugged the holes well. There is also a Dionysian pleasure in the guns with the fresh fish of Jordi, one of the last fishermen of the port of Badalona. And ultimately, the certainty that, when we put the Pueblo To the water, if the destination wants not to float, we will dance on the anxiety, and we will start again.
