Thank you for adding us to your press list. When Mr. de Marichalar stopped in Oriental on his way to Belhaven on Monday, he took the time to give me a terrific interview. Please convey my thanks to him -- I greatly enjoyed our talk. For your information, what follows is the text of the story published in the July 17 issue of our paper, which is a weekly publication.

VIRGINIA BERGER
PAMLICO NEWS STAFF



One never can tell who will stop by Oriental for lunch. On Monday, it was Alvaro de Marichalar, a Spanish adventurer on the final leg of an amazing marine expedition. Nearly two months ago, de Marichalar set outfrom Rome on a Sea-doo, stopped at the Canary Islands and then headed for Antigua. When he landed there, he became the first person ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a jet ski. He stopped into The Bean on the Oriental harbor while traveling up the east coast to New York on the last leg of this 9,500-mile expedition. Tall, tanned and exuberant, de Marichalar is high on life and high on the joys of his journey.

"It's a very intimate way to travel," he said. "It's the only boat that allows you to be inside the water. In any other kind of boat, you're above the water, separated from it. But, in a Sea-doo, the experience is amazing. You can see the turtles, the flying fish, the sharks and the whales - you see everything." De Marichalar was introduced to this small craft in 1982, when he was a student at the University of Miami. "From that minute, I never went back to my sailing boats," he said. "I knew from the first moment that I wanted to use this to explore the sea." In the last 20 years, de Marichalar has made many long-distance expeditions on the tiny craft and holds six world records. An entrepreneur with satellite television and real estate businesses in Madrid, he has had the freedom to set aside two months a year to satisfy his passion for the sea. Nothing, however, could hold a candle to this trip.

"For me, to cross the Atlantic has always been a dream," he said. The ocean has always been a frontier. Before Christopher Columbus, it was like the end of the world - no one would attempt to go west of the Canary Islands. "It has always been a challenge to navigation and it had never been crossed on a Sea-doo." Before he set out, de Marichalar visited the Vatican and received the Pope's blessing.

On first three legs of his journey, he was accompanied by support boats which tracked his voyage from a distance of 10 to 15 miles. >From Rome to the Canary Islands and from Antigua to Miami, the chase boat was motorized but, for the Atlantic crossing, he used a catamaran. "I would travel for 12 hours a day and they I would sleep at night in a net on the catamaran," he said. On this last lap, from Miami to New York, he is traveling alone on the water, coming ashore only to refuel his boat and his body and to sleep at night. There is little room for luggage on a Sea-doo and de Marichalar carries just about all he needs - some flares, his passport, a Motorola satellite telephone, a strobe light - in a little black box. He has been keeping a journal and photos of his travels on his internet site, www.ocean2002.com.

Bombardier, the Canadian company which manufactured his boat, has helped out a bit, fitting out his boat with two GPS units and a built-in VHF radio and sending along a mechanic and a couple of public relations representatives to smooth the way. De Marichalar does not make his journeys solely to satisfy has passion for the sea. For the past 12 years, he has waged his own personal anti-drug campaign and uses his expeditions in this work. "I speak to young people at camps and schools," he said. "When I am traveling, I take videos and I bring them with me when I talk to children. I encourage them to be healthy and to be courageous - to be courageous enough to say no to these things and courageous enough to tell their friends to say no. "These things are easy to explain when you are energized after all these days at sea."

On this, his most spectacular trip, he is also trying to encourage understanding and tolerance among nations. "Everywhere I stop, I bring a Spanish flag and a European flag," he said, "and I take with me a flag from every country and every region. He also brings with him a Bible from Rome, a Torah from the world's oldest synagogue which he visited in Tunisia, and a copy of the Koran which he received at the world's largest mosque in Casablanca. "When I get to New York, I will take all these flags and these books to the Statue of Liberty to make a demonstration for peace." The presentation, de Marichalar said, will be shown live on the Today show early on the morning of July 24. "People should be more together," he said. "We should not worry about differences in religion or about commercial animosity." When the going was difficult out on the ocean, he said these objectives kept him going. "For 57 days I traveled 12 hours a day, standing up all the time because that it the only way not to break your spine on this boat. Sometimes it was very taxing, physically and mentally, but when I remembered the faces of the children, I could not give up." It pleases de Marichalar, who believes that his country's assets and achievements are often overlooked, that he was able to achieve a new world record for Spanish navigation. It also pleases him that he arrived in Antigua 500 years to the day after another famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, set out from Spain on his last voyage to that destination. "Columbus made his other voyages from Portugal," de Marichalar said, "but on his fourth and last voyage, he left from Seville on May 20, 1502." After such adventures, will it be difficult to return to day-to-day life?

Not at all, de Marichalar said. "Part of my normal life is working in Madrid where I have my companies and a little farm I inherited from my parennts, but this is also a part of my normal life. "I don't like to own a lot of things because I prefer to experience life, to celebrate life and experience nature and the sea. "When you're alone so long in such a small boat, you can think you see the face of God in the sea. You certainly see Him in all His creatures. "When there is a storm coming, you realize how small we are and how thankful we have to be for being alive and just having eyes to see."