Man Makes Us All Look Like Idiots: Sails for 85 Days to Be With His Dad For Father’s Day
A global lockdown due to the coronavirus couldn’t stop one man from crossing the Atlantic Ocean to see his dad on Father’s Day in a harrowing 85-day solo journey from Portugal to Argentina that he completed in a small sailboat.
Juan Manuel Ballestero, 47, was living in Spain but visiting a tiny island off mainland Portugal last March when international flights were grounded due to COVID-19. The veteran sailor says he refused to face “the end of the world” apart from his parents back in Argentina, so he packed up his 8.8-metre-long sailboat, the Skua, and set sail for home.
What did you do for you dad for father’s day? I’ll admit I didn’t do much. We’re on opposite sides of the country so I gave him a call, let him know I appreciated him- you know, baseline stuff. {Honestly, it sounds like he already had his hands full impersonating a father’s day from the 1950’s.} Let me say this, you could have blown me out of the water this year with your gifts to dad. You could have gone all out, you could have baked, you could have chauffeured, you could have left him the fuck alone, and you STILL would have been absolutely put to shame by Juan Manuel Ballestero.
If you haven’t read this story already, do it. It’s incredible. This man literally subjected himself to an odyssey. An odyssey. Like the book! This man just got in a boat and sailed across an ocean! For two months! To see his dad! We are talking Portugal to Argentina. That’s two continents. That’s far. How much of a badass do you have to be to even consider this an option? It doesn’t sound like it took him that long to settle on it either! I mean it sounds like this was like, #2 on his list for ways to get home? My list could be 200 items long and sailing across the ocean wouldn’t cut it.
He recreated this movie.
And this movie.
And almost this movie!
I’ll be straight up, Dad, this is out of my wheel house. I love you. I can’t think of a better dad, or how I could ever want one. I also can’t think of how I would ever pull this off. I’m just not cut out for it. Open water? The ocean? Not for me. I’m terrified of it. I get sea sick. Much of that is owed to this movie, appropriately titled: Open Water. I probably watched this on your cable, so this partially on you.
Maybe I’ll get you a drone next year, dad. Or a piece of a drone. I’ll be the drone son. Or the full-collection of Die Hard son. You’ve got two other sons for the sailing shit.
