At a time when one hears ultra-paid soccer players complaining about “having to get dirty” against significantly poorer teams (see, for example, the controversy surrounding San Marino-Germany), there is sailing to remind us what so-called “sportsmanship” is. Yes, at the risk of sounding rhetorical and trite we shout it loudly: this time sport won. The real one, made up of authentic values. We’re talking about the Malingri-Malingri versus Beccaria-Zin challenge on the Portofino-Giraglia-Portofino record (148 miles), aboard small, uninhabitable cat boats: one hundred and fifty miles of splashing and in-your-face waves in the November cold, clinging to the trapeze aboard 20-foot-long beach catamarans in constant glide(we presented it to you here). From their respective Facebook pages, the two teams were spurring and supporting each other, it was really beautiful (not to mention that throughout the pre-departure period, the two teams just trained together, sharing information and data).
BECCARIA-ZIN 1, MALINGRIS 0
In the end Ambrogio Beccaria and Bernardo Zin won on the smaller and lighter Formula 18 Alla Grande Ambeco. The two left at 2 p.m. on Nov. 12 and took 17 hours and 20 minutes (at an average speed of 8.54 knots, not bad!). Instead, Vittorio and Nico Malingri, father and son aboard the 20-foot self-built cat Feel Good set off yesterday morning at 7:49 a.m. but the weather window eventually turned out to be worse than expected, causing them to complete the course in 19 hours, 4 minutes and 52 seconds. Thus, the new record to be broken is the one set by the young Milanese minist.
WEATHER WINDOW WITH SURPRISE
“We had difficulties,” says Vittorio Malingri, “from the beginning to the middle of the course: the wind was less than expected and the sea very cross. The boat could not be made to walk. As soon as we hooked the wind, we flew up to the Giraglia with peaks of 16-18 knots. On the way back, the wind was more from the northeast than we thought, and we had to sail close-hauled, so it was slower. But we would have made it anyway, if it weren’t for the two long wind drops at La Spezia and going up Liguria.”
“Ambrose and Bernardo were very good, both in identifying the right time to leave and in bringing the boat. It makes one very happy that the idea of creating a new record accessible to everyone in the backyard was successful. Beccaria and Zin, at this point, not only hold the record but were the first to take this route.”
