Gaspar stopped the boat for 22 minutes mid-race

Ramiro: as chair of the disciplinary committee I'm sending you file 4/2026 signed and, separately, this letter, which does not go inside it.

It goes separately because the file is going to be read by a lawyer who has never sailed in his life and it comes out as cold as an X-ray, and because there is something in it that I do not want turned into a box on a form.

I'll tell you in order.

On Sunday we ran the twenty-fourth Costa da Mariña Lucense, fourteen boats, start at 15:10 from Burela. The north-westerly rose to force 6 in mid-afternoon, which is about fifty kilometres an hour with the sea breaking, so at 15:48 I announced on channel 72 of the radio that instruction 12.3 was in force: lifejacket and harness compulsory for all crew. The harness is the strap you clip to the boat so that, if you go over, you go into the water but you do not get left behind. I logged it with the list of who acknowledged, as always. The *Rula* acknowledged at 15:49. The *Ninfa de Burela* never acknowledged, and at the time that struck me as slackness; you will see that it is not.

At 18:40, within the time limit, Olegario Pontes, owner and skipper of the *Rula* and owner of the ice plant at the fish market, filed a protest against the *Ninfa*. Two grounds: engine and outside help. He asked for disqualification.

And he had something to go on. The *Ninfa*'s tracker — the compulsory device that reports position every thirty seconds — says this: at 16:06 she is doing 6.1 knots on a north-east heading; at 16:07 she reads 0.0; she stays at 0.0 for twenty-two minutes, some three hundred and seventy metres off Rapadoira point, outside Foz; at 16:29 she starts up and by 16:31 she is doing 6.4 knots, about twelve kilometres an hour, in a straight line. A boat stopped for twenty-two minutes in the middle of a race and then a clean straight run at 6.4 knots is, seen on a screen, exactly what it looks like. She crossed the finish ninth of fourteen. At 16:06 she was leading her class.

I summoned Gaspar Irurzun, skipper of the *Ninfa*, percebeiro by trade — a man who tears goose barnacles off the rocks with a scraper and a rope — forty-four years old. He sat in front of the committee for forty minutes and said three sentences. "I stopped." "Whatever you give me, I'll take." And, when I asked him about the engine, that he had not started it. I asked him why he stopped and he did not answer. I warned him that not answering could cost him disqualification and he signed the penalty form there and then, without reading it, with my pen.

At 21:05 I adjourned. At that hour, Ramiro, I had a protest that was going to succeed and a skipper letting himself be disqualified without opening his mouth, and I swear the only thing I thought was that he had started the engine and at least had the decency not to lie to me.

Three things grated on me and I noted them down without knowing what to do with them. One: at 19:30 we inspected the *Ninfa* at her mooring and the engine seal was intact. Two: on the port bench there was a wet harness with an inventory number painted by hand, EV-7, from the club's junior sailing school, issued to Noa Irurzun, eleven years old, his daughter. Three: on the channel 72 recording, at 16:27:10, there is a man's voice saying a single word, "aboard", without identifying himself and without a call sign. It is Gaspar's voice. I know it because I have been calling his starts for nine years.

How nobody else can have seen it is what I asked myself all night. Because there was nobody else. The press boat took two photographs the whole afternoon, at 15:14 and at 16:52, and both show grey water; the press boat was at 16:07 well ahead, with the head of the fleet. The *Rula* was leading and the *Ninfa* was the only boat close behind her; the other twelve were more than half an hour back. Behind the *Ninfa* there was no one left.

At 23:10 Sabela Quintás came into the office, twenty-three years old, crew of the *Rula*, second-year student at the nautical and fishing college and a seasonal waitress on the promenade. She brought two handwritten sheets and asked for them to be added. They were added, and with them the whole file turned over.

At 16:04, in a badly handled gybe — the turn in which the sail crosses from one side to the other with the wind behind — the boom, which is the horizontal spar that holds the foot of the sail, swept her and threw her over the starboard side. She was not wearing a harness. The *Rula* carries two and the owner and the tactician had them on. She had a foam lifejacket, the kind that does not inflate, and in force 6 with the water at fourteen degrees that gave her a good hour and not much more.

She watched the *Rula* sail on.

The *Ninfa* stopped. Gaspar bore away — to leeward, the side the wind escapes by — came back over his own track, clipped his daughter's harness to the stern rail and went into the water up to his waist to grab her by the lifejacket, because she could no longer close her hands. She writes that she remembers less of the cold than she expected, and that what she remembers worst is how hard counting became: she was counting waves to know how long she had been in, and the numbers kept getting lost halfway. And that when she saw the *Ninfa*'s hull coming side-on she thought he had not seen her, because he was coming too slowly.

She spent twenty-two minutes between the water and the *Ninfa*'s cockpit — the cockpit is the well where the crew sit — before they wrapped her in two dry sailbags. She stayed inside the cabin for the rest of the race and went ashore at 18:10, when there was nobody left. That is why nobody counted her: the finish log counts boats, not crew, and the crew list we hold is the one from the start.

And now what she wrote on the second sheet, which is the reason for this letter.

She needs three hundred signed hours at sea for her qualification. They are signed by the skipper you sail with. Hers are signed by Olegario Pontes and she has a hundred and twenty to go. At 17:30, on the pontoon, Pontes told her that a man overboard without a harness means an inspection, a fine and the end of the *Rula*'s season. She asked Gaspar to say nothing. Gaspar said all right.

So when I had him sitting in front of me warning him I was going to disqualify him, he already knew that one sentence would save him, and he had given his word to a twenty-three-year-old girl. That is the thing I do not want turned into a box on a form.

The last part she wrote on her own, without anyone asking: "What I did not know at half past five was that he was going to protest against him. Someone else can sign my hours."

In the file you will see that I dismiss the protest, that I grant the *Ninfa* the position she held at 16:06, and that I disqualify the *Rula* under 12.3, aggravated by the fact that the breach consisted of carrying no safety equipment for three of her five crew. Pontes protesting the boat that pulled his own crew member out of the water, and denying it to me three times, I pass on to you and I will not comment further. And I have written to the nautical and fishing college for one purpose only: that the girl is not docked this weekend's hours.

It remains for me to tell you how Sunday ended. I went down to the quay at 00:20 to notify Irurzun, because by then he was already loading the car to go out for barnacles at low tide. I told him the protest had been dismissed, that he was getting first place back, and that he could collect the form he had signed unread.

And the business of the acknowledgement, which I said you would understand: Gaspar acknowledges nothing, Ramiro. Not instruction 12.3 and not a disqualification. He signed unread for the same reason he did not answer.

He did not ask about the place. He said this: "The harness is my daughter's. I want it back before Saturday, she's got a match."

Fermina Olazábal, principal judge, Galician sailing federation