TAG Heuer VELAFestival grand prize to Mario Pedol and Massimo Gino for 30 years of Nauta Yachts

During the Sailor of the Year evening on Friday, May 6, the TAG Heuer VELAFestival Grand Prize will also be awarded, a tribute to a great sailor’s career that this year will be given to Mario Pedol and Massimo Gino for 30 years of Nauta Yachts during which Italian designers designed the world’s most beautiful boats.

Nauta Yachts is one of the certainties of nautical “made in Italy” that places us in the high rungs of world consideration. This success was the result of a great passion and a deliberate but also somewhat accidental and adventurous beginning. One of those stories that resembles building and inventing computers in a garage, where the engine of success is one’s great passion. The firm’s spokesperson is Mario Pedol, of the trio who founded in ’85 the firm that began as a construction site remains with him Massimo Gino. In the firm some 15 engineers, architects, yacht designers. Nauta’s signature is now on dozens of boats, from the world’s largest, the 180-meter-long megayacht Azzam, to the smaller and in some ways more difficult boats in the Beneteau production.

TEN EXAMPLES OF THE NAUTA FEELING

1977 – ADVENTURE 703 is the mini tonner designed by Andrea Vallicelli with which the adventure started, which turned passion into a job.

1980 – OYSTER 37. Under the name Nauta Import, he distributed from England the Oyster, which were racing-cruising boats at the time, managing to sell four examples.


1986 – NAUTA 54. The debut of the current Nauta Yachts with the 54 displayed at the 1986 Genoa Boat Show was a success with compliments galore.

1991 – NAUTA 70 A sloop that still makes its mark, even taking advantage of the water lines and sail plan by Bruce Farr.

1999 – MY SONG (Nauta 84) The Nauta 84 My Song is what Pedol himself calls their manifesto boat, still relevant 15 years later.

2005- OCEANIS 45 The relationship with Beneteau and mass production made the study more comprehensive, forcing it to live with technical and economic constraints.

2006- SOUTHERN WIND 100 As many as fifteen sailing examples of this model from the South African shipyard-no one in the world has built as many identical boats of this size.

2010 – KIRRIBILLI Working with Renzo Piano was enlightening in understanding the relationship between boating and design.

2012 – LAGOON 400 S2 Nauta breaks into the world of multihulls, erasing the divisions between the cockpit and the saloon

2015 – Reichel Pugh Nauta Baltic 130′. At 40 meters, it will be the largest sailing yacht ever designed by the Milan-based Nauta Yachts studio.