‘Gipsy’, the return of Elcano’s sister to the Bay of Cádiz

When the training ship ‘Juan Sebastián Elcano’ was built in 1927 in Cádiz shipyard, owned at that time by Horacio Echevarrieta, some of the material used to build one of today’s symbols of the Spanish Navy was left over. When the Basque businessman saw that there was hardly any activity going on in the factory, he decided to use the leftover pieces and build a boat for himself, which he named ‘Marichu’, in honour of one of his daughters who had died. It was not any old boat, but a very modern yacht for that time as it had a radio and an engine. Petete Rubio and Eduardo Lacave, who form part of the Fundación Vela Clásica de España, define it ‘as simply amazing. This was “the boat”’. It 80,000 pesetas to build, which was a small fortune 94 years ago.

Read article from the Diario de Cádiz