You don’t forget your first impression of Adix. Long overhangs, a bowsprit like a narwhal’s tusk and that distinctive three-masted Schooner rig all announce her presence long before you are close enough to read the gold-painted letters on her narrow transom. For the Botín family, which has owned her for nearly four decades, there is simply no finer yacht.
Gonzalo, part of the famous banking dynasty behind Santander, remembers his maiden voyage clearly. “It was in Falmouth during sea trials, in 1991,” he recalls. “She had just undergone her major transformation, from Jessica to Adix. The old rig had a square top sail on the foremast but now she had become a proper gaff Schooner, designed to be very much like the legendary Atlantic. The big question was how she would tack, because Jessica had actually needed the engine. So, the first tack was a big moment, and she behaved just as expected. Everyone was delighted.”
The boat had begun life as a topsail Schooner six years earlier, built in steel at Astilleros de Mallorca to a design drawn by Arthur Holgate. Her original owner was an Argentinean yachtsman, but she soon found her way to the Pacific, where she was bought by the colourful Aussie businessman Alan Bond. He was at the height of his powers then, having recently bankrolled Australia’s successful America’s Cup campaign, and the Schooner was renamed XXXX, after the Castlemaine XXXX beer brand he owned.
But this is just a prologue to the dominant story of the yacht’s life. When she returned to Europe in 1989, she was acquired by the family that has owned her ever since. The story goes that Gonzalo’s father, Jaime, was in the habit of chartering the Fife Schooner Altair in the Mediterranean under the captaincy of classic yacht legend Paul Goss and so enjoyed the experience that he eventually asked Goss to find him a grand Schooner of his own.
After buying Adix, he sailed the boat for a season to identify her strengths and weaknesses, before sending her to Pendennis in Falmouth for a mammoth refit under the guidance of naval architect Gerard Dykstra. “That first refit was quite ambitious given how early in the yard’s development it was,” says Charlie Ross, Operations Director at Pendennis. “We chopped the existing keel off and removed the transom, restyling it and making it six metres longer in the process. The foremast rig was changed and there was a whole interior strip-out and redesign.”
Inspired in part by the famous Schooner Atlantic, the work transformed the boat’s performance. You can feel the excitement as Gonzalo recounts an episode during the 1997 Atlantic Challenge Race from New York to The Lizard. “The conditions were perfect for Adix: 30 to 35 knots of wind and a long swell running east,” he says. “We were on a broad reach, all canvas spread, just one reef on the mizzen, doing between 15 and 17 knots. Then it happened twice in a five-minute span: Adix took off on two waves, the deck flat and steady, shining white whiskers emerging as far as the forward mast. I had my eyes on the numbers, and the top speed was 24.9 knots. We were all cheering
like madmen!”
Used mostly as a family cruising boat, she nevertheless showed flashes of her true mettle, and never more so than in 2002 when she upended the long-held transatlantic record set by the Schooner Atlantic in 1905. Her average speed of 12.6 knots far eclipsed the latter’s 10.3 knots.
She returned to Pendennis regularly for maintenance and update work over the years – moving one of the deckhouses here; freshening up paintwork there. But the watershed refit came in 2014-15. Weight aloft was slashed when the 25-year-old aluminium spars were replaced with lighter, stiffer carbon fibre supported by ECsix standing rigging. The sail area was increased once more and 10 tonnes of ballast added to the keel. Portlights were installed to bring natural light into the cabins, and the boat set off for a new round of cruising the US East Coast and racing in the Caribbean, before heading into the Pacific for the second time in her life.
But even the longest and most illustrious chapters must come to an end, and so it proved recently with Adix. After enjoying an emotional 10-day valedictory cruise across the Atlantic in 2024, Jaime Botín, the visionary owner that had done so much to improve the yacht and ensure her survival, passed away. Around the same time, her long-standing Captain, Paul Goss, began to make way for his young understudy, Oliver Bell.
The latter’s story is pure Adix, having joined the crew as junior deckhand in 2016 and worked his way up. “Sailing a vessel like Adix gives so much back to you,” says Bell. “It’s been an awesome journey, and I’ve got to learn under one of the greatest yacht captains of modern times. I thought she was the most extravagant, prettiest yacht in any harbour. That’s something that’s stuck with me to this day. I’m biased, of course, but she’s the pinnacle of sailing yachts: elegant, powerful. She has a great ethos and is renowned in the industry for training crew, sailing first and upholding specific values over four decades.”
Crew that have graduated from the ‘University of Adix’ are prized on other sailing yachts, becoming master on such storied vessels as Adela and Rebecca. Bell puts it down to the environment fostered by Botín’s bottomless pride in the boat and Captain Goss’s deep love of a classic. Fortunately, Gonzalo is every bit as committed to Adix as his
father was.
“What makes me most proud of Adix is her crew, who have been first class under Paul Goss and look very promising now and very young too with Oliver Bell,” he says. “Adix means a lot to me, and on a personal level I would say that she is even more endearing since my father passed away. She represents some of the best memories the family have of our father, and all his vision and legacy as a yacht owner.”
Gonzalo is a highly successful sailor in his own right, with a Class 40 campaign behind him as well as owning another classic – a Fife 15-metre, The Lady Anne. “One of the most extreme racing classes of all time,” he sums up with evident satisfaction. “She is outright dangerous in a breeze and a real joy in light winds.”
He also laments that more of the world’s financial elite don’t cherish sailing yachts. “There is obviously some pride in owning Adix and our only regret is that not many wealthy people are inspired by classic yachts and decide to take care of them,” he shrugs. “They seem to prefer ugly and ridiculously expensive motor yachts.”
There are hints that Adix might make an appearance on a suitable racecourse soon, but Gonzalo is clear that her calling lies elsewhere. “Adix really comes into herself off the beaten track,” he says.
“My priority is to go cruising in high latitudes north and south. I would also love to go on a fast circumnavigation down to the Southern Ocean and the three capes.”
