Argentinian man sails across Atlantic for father

Solo trip back home spurred by need to be with family during pandemic

Days after Argentina cancelled all international passenger flights to shield the country from the new coronavirus, Juan Manuel Ballestero began his journey home the only way possible: He stepped aboard his small sailboat for what turned out to be an 85-day odyssey across the Atlantic.

The 47-year-old sailor could have stayed put on the tiny Portuguese island of Porto Santo, to ride out the era of lockdowns and social distancing in a scenic place largely spared by the virus. But the idea of spending what he thought could be “the end of the world” away from his family, especially his father who was soon to turn 90, was unbearable.

So he said he loaded his 29foot sailboat with canned tuna, fruit and rice and set sail in midMarch.

Friends tried to dissuade Ballestero from embarking on the perilous journey, and authorities in Portugal warned him he might not be allowed to re-enter if he ran into trouble and had to turn back. But he was resolute. His relatives, used to Ballestero’s itinerant lifestyle, knew better than to try to talk him out of it.

Ballestero has spent much of his life sailing. He bought his sailboat in 2017, hoping to take it on a loop around the world. It proved up to the task of traversing an ocean.

When he was approaching the Americas, a brutal wave rattled the boat some 240 kilomtres from Vitoria, Brazil, he said. That episode forced him to make an unplanned pit stop in Vitoria. During that stop, Ballestero learned that his brother had told reporters in Argentina about the voyage, which enthralled people who were bored and cooped up at home.

At the urging of friends, he created an Instagram account to document the final leg of the trip.

When he made it to his native Mar del Plata, on June17, he was startled by the hero’s welcome he received.

“Entering my port where my father had his sailboat, where he taught me so many things and where I learned how to sail and where all this originated, gave me the taste of a mission accomplished,” he said.