Thank you and I hope to see you soon hahaha
Dani Anglada
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The quote that opens the text has intrahistory. He tells us how Dani Anglada (37) feels today, how he laughs at himself.
A few weeks ago, when we met on WhatsApp, I wrote to him:
–Let’s set a date and see you that way.
And he answered me:
–Thank you and I hope to see you soon hahaha.
Reading his response, I felt stupid: Dani Anglada had lost his sight on January 11, 2018.
When we met at La Vanguardia, days later, I apologized for my clumsiness and Dani Anglada laughed even more:
–They are ways of speaking, man, I already know!
(…)
In reality, getting here has not been so easy. Throughout his journey there has been despair and crying, even the desire to lose his life.
–On one occasion I went three days without eating or drinking. Seeing me so weak and pale, my mother (Margarita Pich) told me that she would admit me: ‘Do it for me and for your dog,’ she told me. I felt selfish and decided to fight again.
(…)
We have to go back to January 11, 2018.
Dani Anglada was sailing on a large ship. The vessel was transporting methane gas. She had loaded up in Pampa (Peru) and was heading to Japan. The ship was 500 miles south of Hawaii. From the command post, Dani Anglada received an order: he had to carry out the annual inspection of the fire extinguishers.
He received the order reluctantly, although he decided to comply with it.
He had checked five fire extinguishers when they asked him for two more.
The last one was in poor condition.
–180 bars of pressure came upon me. Part of my head came off. I thought it was the end because I couldn’t breathe. My companion disappeared from my sight. I don’t know how I managed to get to a faucet and wash myself. I asked my partner: ‘Is he very screwed?’ In response, I only heard: ‘Heading for Hawaii!’ I understood that the matter was ugly: those ships cannot move just like that.
He doesn’t remember much else.
If anything, the pain.
Every two or three hours, morphine. Dani Anglada had broken his trigeminal nerve. It took them 48 hours to reach a hospital in Hawaii.
Weeks after the accident, already among doctors in Barcelona, ??he saw some light, a contrast between clarity and darkness. She had recovered her cornea.
–It was a mirage. She felt like she was seeing less and less. Desperate, on January 6, 2019, I attempted suicide. That’s when my mother asked me to fight for her and my dog.
–And how did he fight?
–I joined ONCE, and I am still with them. They taught me rehabilitation techniques to clean myself, walk around the city, use technology on the computer and mobile phone, I follow their psychological service. I said to myself: ‘I don’t see. Adapt. And that is my reality. I feel vulnerable, I lack autonomy. I have learned how to make a fried egg. I have broken all my toes, from hitting myself so many times at home. If I had to live with all this, I looked for tools that would help me achieve it. That’s how I feel happy. He had been locked in the room for four years. But at the beginning of 2022, I recovered a childhood dream.
-Which?
–Go around the world sailing. I said to myself: ‘With everything I’ve experienced, how can I take that dream away from me?’ I understood that my place was in the water.
He entered the Isidre Esteve Foundation and pulled strings to return to the sea. She did it in December 2022, after building the first reinforced sailing scooter for two people and adapted for the blind.
Today, Dani Anglada has almost sixty days at sea.
He does it by driving alone a 5.60 m long catamaran with a mainmast and a sail. She can reach eleven knots (20 km/h). When he sails, another boat accompanies him. There goes his coach. The technician sends you auditory signals.
Its navigation is magical.
Dani Anglada interprets the beating of the waves, the currents, the sounds generated by the sail.
When directing the skate, it is still said:
–How can I die without feeling the wind or the sun on one side of my face?
