The Lanzaroteño Mariano Stinga, together with his friend from Vigo Enrique Lagos, offered on April 22nd a conference titled A Journey in the Arctic: From Ice to Open Ocean, in which they told the public about their experience during a trip through Greenland.
Stinga is a graduate in Naval and Oceanic Engineering Mechanical Engineering, and is currently pursuing the master's degree in Naval and Oceanic Engineering, a course of study that Lagos is also pursuing.
The conference took place in the Concepción Arenal Auditorium of the Ferrol Industrial Campus and the students shared in it their experiences as crew members of the sailing ship expedition Brown Bear through Greenland and the North Atlantic.
The event was carried out thanks to a research scholarship within the Cosme Álvarez de los Ríos and Navantia Chair. "My tutor, Ana Álvarez, and in turn director of the chair, was very interested in the trip we were going to take, which I kept her updated on during last year. The chair has a cycle of conferences, and I told her about the idea of giving a conference and she thought it was perfect, and so it was," explains the Lanzaroteño.
Both young people flew at the beginning of July last year to the capital, Nuuk, where they explored for a month until they began the Atlantic crossing, something that took them twelve days. After that, they stayed for a week. A total of two months of an unforgettable trip. "I took away an experience that only happens once and I feel fortunate for the opportunity I had, along with my friend Kike, and for all the incredible places we saw," Stinga tells La Voz.
On this trip, he also acknowledges having learned a lot and "having had so much time to think about the really important things".
A conference marked by details and a lot of photographic material
In the conference, Mariano Stinga and Enrique Lagos spoke about the precedent of the trip (the shipowner Hugh Clay), along with the plan he had to sail the Atlantic, also about the trip that Lagos completed the previous summer (which preceded the trip); about the Brown Bear giving technical information about the boat, and everything it had; about polar navigation, talking about climatology, ice and safety; the preparation they themselves carried out for the trip (in terms of clothing, physically and mentally); and their own experience, with a lot of photographic material, talking about the entire exploration route they took. They finished by talking about how they prepared and how they crossed the Atlantic, and about experiences upon arriving in England.
Regarding the possibility of holding a conference in Lanzarote, Stinga states that she would love to. "Of course, there's no place like home, but it's also true that we designed this conference for a general audience, so that everything would be understood reasonably well. In Lanzarote, sailing is the sport par excellence, so the content would have to be adapted," she points out.
The passion for the sea and boats has accompanied Stinga since childhood. "My dream, since I was little, was always to design and build my own boats, in which I sailed and so on. With everything I have learned in recent years, I have a broader vision and dedicating myself to the world of high-performance vessels is my goal as an engineer," he concludes.
