Instagram #crocieragdv2016 We reveal the names of the winners!

With nearly 800 photos competing in the “GDV Cruise 2016” contest, you have flooded Instagram this summer. Forcing the editorial staff (but also the photographers working with the Sailing Newspaper) to really work overtime. But finally, here are the winners revealed! And congratulations to all!

The winner is Otto Villani (@8villani on Instagram), who spends his summers gallivanting around the Mediterranean, after winters spent in Southampton studying…yacht design! Here is how he told us about the birth of his photography: “”The photo was born one mid-August morning, at dawn after an overnight. I was located off Porto Vecchio. When dawn broke, I decided to “geek out” with the GoPro and sitting on the dolphin boat I improvised juggling with the GoPro in one hand and the iPhone’s led flash pointed at me in the other. This gdv cruise contest was an opportunity to bring together two passions I have always had, sailing and photography that were passed on to me by my father. I have always lived with sailing beside me, from working in the family charter company to studying yacht design at Southampton University. My favorite shots are those that enhance the aesthetic beauty of landscapes or objects, among the latter I like to get lost in observing the lines of a boat“. If this is not passion…

Passion also distinguishes the second runner-up, Gian Marco Ghiaroni (@giamma182), who says, “The passion for sailing was passed on to me as a child by the man who will always remain for me the Captain (The Captain, as I call him), my father. I will never stop thanking him, because he gave me the opportunity to enter this world and discover its beauty. Two years ago I decided to get my boating license, and when I hear the call of the sea I go: you look for a boat, find a crew (Nicolo, Elia and Fabio above all), drop the moorings, turn upwind. Everything else does not matter. Then again, even a 23-year-old engineering student needs to take his attention away from mathematical calculations and college stress; to do so, there is no more powerful weapon than the sailboat.“.

In third place is Carmen Prudente (@carmencoco), who, on the other hand, has only recently approached sailing: “Since the last three summers, because of a passion of my boyfriend and his friends, every year we set sail for a new destination. First year Croatia, second year Pontine Islands and the Campania archipelago, and this year the Egadi Islands, and each time the love for the sea and its sense of infinity that it gives us increases. This photo was born in Favignana capturing the moment of rising from one of the many swims in those waters as clear as a swimming pool, recalling my passion for swimming that I have had since childhood, having in fact practiced 11 years of professional swimming.”.