Sailor
Speaker
Xabier Agote
Founder and President of Albaola (Pasaia, Basque Country, Spain)

Hailing from San Sebastián, he has devoted his entire life to the sea, working as a sailor, rower, shipbuilder and promoter and disseminator of maritime culture.
Having completed several transoceanic sailing voyages, he rowed across the Atlantic from Tenerife to Barbados in 2001. In 2006, he captained the Apaizac Obeto expedition — a voyage of over 2,000 kilometres along the Canadian Atlantic coast in a 16^(th)-century Basque whaling boat.
He graduated from The Apprenticeshop, the shipbuilding school at the Maine Maritime Museum (USA), in 1989. Throughout his career, he has studied shipbuilding techniques in the Basque Country, establishing himself as a promoter and disseminator of maritime culture and an expert in historical re-enactment expeditions. He has also collaborated on naval archaeology research projects.
In 1997, he founded the Albaola association, and in 2014 he opened the Albaola Itsas Kultur Faktoria shipyard museum in Pasaia. The centre is dedicated to the recovery, enhancement, and dissemination of maritime heritage by constructing scientific replicas of heritage boats in front of the public. In 2018, in cooperation with the Pasaia Town Council, he established the Pasaia Itsas Festibala, a biennial event that showcases traditional boats and maritime cultures from around the globe.