Born to Sail: How Cristina Silva Is Turning a Childhood Dream Into an Open-Water Reality

As a child, whenever anyone asked Cristina Silva what she wanted to do with her life, she gave the same answer: travel the world in a sailboat.

The reply never changed. Silva grew up without any nautical tradition in her family — no sailboats, no speedboats, no rowing boats. She cannot point to a moment when the interest first appeared. But walking with her father near their home in Benalmadena, Spain, the sight of the sailboats in the marina always stopped her. Years later, passing the Flamengo and Botafogo harbors of Rio de Janeiro on the way to work, the same thing happens. "The sight of the sailboats anchored there recharges me," she says.

In this story, Silva, a Senior Software Engineer who has been with X-Team for just over a year, describes how she took her first real steps toward that dream, what competing in a Rio de Janeiro regatta taught her and why she thinks sailing is more accessible than most people assume.

The 1st Steps Toward a Lifelong Goal

For years, the plan to sail the world existed as intention. This year, Silva decided to break it into smaller pieces and start acting on it. She enrolled at a sailing school in Rio de Janeiro that runs a structured regatta program, giving students a path from classroom to competition.

The Brazilian marine force organizes a regatta race in Rio de Janeiro every year, open to any crew and sailboat meeting the race categories' requirements. Silva's school uses these events as practical exams — a chance for students to apply lessons that don't come up in day-to-day sailing practice. She competed aboard a Fast 230, a 23-foot sailboat. The crew was a professor in the skipper role, responsible for instructions and team management, and four students. Two students took turns at the helm; Silva and one other crewmember filled the trimmer and bowman roles.

Going in, she kept her expectations modest. "I remember telling the crew that crossing the finish line on time would be enough for me on my first attempt." The result surprised everyone: their time was 2:20:20 against their main competitor's 2:21:35. They won.

What Makes Sailing Hard — and Worth It

Silva has thought carefully about where the sport trips people up. The first obstacle is simply starting. Brazil doesn't have a well-developed maritime industry and ecosystem, she says, so the sport can seem closed off — but it isn't. "Sailing is more accessible than people think."

The second challenge is continuing. Once you start, sustaining the practice requires research and effort: additional courses, crossings, boat rentals, finding the right communities. The third challenge, she adds with some irony, is trying to keep the addiction under control.

The appeal, for her, is layered. Sailing is an outdoor activity that meaningfully improved her well-being after spending extended time indoors during the COVID-19 outbreak. On the water, the noise of the city disappears. There is only the sea and the view over Rio de Janeiro. She has been deepening her preparation steadily — most recently spending four days aboard a sailboat in Paraty, completing a course that covered crossing planning using meteorology and nautical charts, electronic navigation for limited-visibility conditions and engine use for when the wind drops.

But what she enjoys most is what she calls the nerdy side of the sport: sail tuning, the science of trimming sails to extract the best possible performance from the boat. "A speedboat goes fast but you only enjoy the arrival," she quotes a professor as saying. "In a sailboat, you can enjoy both the journey and the arrival."

Where the Wind Can Take You

For anyone who has never sailed but is considering it, Silva's advice is direct: go to the nearest sailing school and get on the water. "The only way to form a sailor is at sea," she says. "And luckily for us, the ocean offers plenty of space to fail and to try again."

The destinations she lists as possibilities read like coordinates from a life not yet lived: the Bay of Ilha Grande, the Dalmatian Coast, the Mopelia, the Dodecanese Islands, the Auckland area, the Spitsbergen, the Andaman Sea, the British Virgin Islands. The wind, she notes, can take you to thousands of places. For an engineer who still says "travel the world in a sailboat" when asked about her future, the list is not a fantasy — it is a plan in progress.

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