The history of sailing at Argentario Sailing Week. All the winners

Thirty boats, crews from eight nations, 117 years of sailing history at sea. It was a real party the 21st of the Argentario Sailing Week organized by the Santo Stefano Yacht Club and the Municipality of Monte Argentario. Not only for the perfect weather conditions (three days of westerly winds and finally the Sirocco with peaks of intensity over 20 knots), but especially for the protagonists, the classic and vintage boats.

Featured boats at Argentario Sailing Week

Each with a fantastic story. One only has to scroll through the top three finishers in the Vintage Auric category, for example, to realize this.

Argentario Sailing Week 2022 –
Vintage Aurics – The Winners

We start with the winning boat in the Vintage Aurici category, the Scud of “Mr. Luna Rossa” Patrizio Bertelli.

Scud is one of two works of art (the other is Linnet) from Bertelli’s stable (noted boat collector, here is his “collection”) designed by the Leonardo Da Vinci of sail design, American Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (1848-1938).

leggi anche

Grand Soleil Cup 2025 stops on the Adriatic: here’s how it went in Portopiccolo

Herreshoff, called the wizard of Bristol, who was the true inventor of modern boats. Just remember that he invented the fin with the ballast placed as low as possible. He actually revolutionized stability under sail, he also devised the first compensation system that allows boats of different sizes to compete for the final victory regardless of size. Scud is one of the most significant and successful pieces of jewelry designed by Herreshoff.

Scud is the twelfth yacht launched by Herreshoff’s own shipyard in 1904 of a series of thirteen identical boats in the “Bar Harbor 31-footer” class, 14.80 m long overall, 9.60 waterline and 3.20 m wide overall. This class was in 1903 the smallest cruising boat also capable of participating in club regattas. Scud is one of Bertelli’s most recent purchases, which entrusted the philological restoration to Federico Nardi of Cantiere Navale dell’Argentario. Regular presence at the helm (he was also there at Argentario) Brazilian outfielder Torben Grael.

Maurizia Falone Percivale interviewed him for us.

Torben Grael: “Sailing is an ensemble, like a concert.”

The comment at the dock was, “SCUD? Did a flawless race; a real lesson in sailing. They deserved to win.”

Quickly I catch up with Torben Grael, whom I had already met and interviewed (for the Sailing Newspaper) in New York, during the pit stop of VOR 2006/7. He is in the company of Andrea, his sailor wife who was aboard Recluse. He is, rightly, relaxed and laid back.

“In this regatta we took advantage of our strengths. On this last day, the decisive one, we had to win, with more wind we sailed well. The boat is very competitive. It is different from others because it is a very powerful boat, it has a hull shape with a lot of power and the mast is very low; and if we suffer a little bit in light wind, in stronger wind the boat is very strong.

leggi anche

“Air Force” dominates in the Adriatic. And now it’s off to Catanzaro

And then we made the right choices: we got off to a good start, the boat walks well in this air, we went the right way, picked the right sails, we also have a very good spinnaker…

Sailing is an ensemble, like a concert.

Add that we have an America’s Cup-style crew. All very good…everything very synchronized when you do the maneuvers; the whole thing gives you serenity…”

I ask him about Pietro d’Alì, whom I met in the morning and who was aboard Scud. He smiles, pleasantly. Look up to the upper left – a sign of concentration in order to give the right answer:

“Peter is a great observer, a person who has a very strong sailing experience. He has sailing in his veins. He helps you a lot. I always enjoy working with Pietro because he always gives you the right information and then adjusts the sail well; he is also always in a good mood…” he continues, smiling with pleasure. You can feel that he loves his entire team, that he values them and is grateful for their work.

I stop by to ask him about his next big dream: “I, honestly, would like to see Luna Rossa win the America’s Cup. Because a person like Patrick deserves it, he’s been trying for years and it would be beautiful“. Very good Torben. As time goes on, you get bigger and bigger.

(M.F.P.)

Back to the regatta. Behind Scud in the Vintage Aurics was Marga.

We had seen her spinning at 13 knots in 25 knots of wind last year at Le Voiles de Saint Tropez and fell in love with her.

1910. Marga was born in Sweden on the orders of Queen Victoria of Baden to participate in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. It ranked fourth but amazed everyone with its revolutionary lines, with a very wide stern for those times, conceived by C.O. Liljegren, a Scandinavian designer with over two hundred hulls to his credit.

2014. Alessandra Angelini, 38, an aerospace engineer with an explosive passion for sailing, which she practices with the Nacra 17, one of the most acrobatic and difficult dinghies, meets Marga marooned on dry land at the Tecnomar shipyard in Fiumicino.

He doesn’t know what boat it is, but he falls in love with it. After a lengthy investigation, he discovers that it is Marga, and it is part of the 10-Meter International Tonnage class that participated in the 1912 and 1920 Olympics; only 20 were built. With his brother Igino and friend of Tomas De Vargas Machuca, a collector of vintage cars, they decided to restore it to its original state down to the last rivet of the mahogany hull. Sole concession, an inboard engine is installed.

A Swedish magazine of the time described it as a rugged hull with aggressive, even somewhat brutal shapes, but with the most beautiful sails ever on a Swedish boat. Very true.

Also in the Vintage Aurics, in third place is Chinook (m. 17.82) is one of fourteen New York 40s built between 1916 and 1926 for members of the New York Yacht Club, who raced equal boats in the waters of Newport. Today there are no more than four examples still sailing, including Rowdy (1916) and Marilee (1926).

The owner is Paolo Zannoni, 73, who in addition to being in love with his sailing jewel, is chairman of the board of Prada, was chairman of Autogrill, chairman of Dolce and Gabbana Holding, and secretary of the board of Beretta Holding.

Argentario Sailing Week 2022 – Spirit of Tradition – The Winners

In the Spirit of Tradition category first place for Toi et Moi the modern classic Alessandro Maria Rinaldi built by Dykstra in 2018.

In second place was Midva by sailor/illustrator Davide Besana. The Three Quarter Ton (10.61 meters) in mahogany laminate, built in 1982 and made famous throughout the Mediterranean for winning the Giraglia a few years ago. A victory that has become legendary for this Ron Holland design (Boris Grilanc saw the Swan 371 at the Genoa show and asked Ron Holland for plans to build a slightly smaller wooden copy) built by Petronio and Pecarich.

In third place was Bjorn Hedlund’s Hanni II .

Argentario Sailing Week 2022 – Classics – The Winners

Another mythical boat, fresh from refit, triumphed in the category reserved for classic boats: The Moor of Venice I, by Massimiliano Ferruzzi. The boat from which the Moor’s saga started.

The design (signed German Frers) of the Moro di Venezia I, built by the Carlini shipyard of seven-ply laminated wood on acacia laminated frames, is dated 1976 and at vintage sail races runs among the Classics. Launched in 1976 and the progenitor of the Italian Maxi Yacht IOR class, she was desired by Raul Gardini, the former king of Italian chemistry. Subsequent boats bearing this name have made Italian sailing history, racing in the America’s Cup.

In 1977 he won the Channel Race in England and the following year crossed the Atlantic to compete in the SORC races and dominate the classic Miami-Nassau. He participated in the dramatic 1979 Fastnet and held the Barcolana record from 1987 to 2005.

In second place was Crivizza by Ariella Cattai and Luigi Rolandi. A III Class RORC (Royal Ocean Racing Club), 11.52 meters long, designed in 1958 by Englishman Alan H. Buchanan and launched in 1966 by the Apollonio shipyard in Trieste. In 2019, the boat circumnavigated Italy with Mauro Pelaschier to promote respect for the sea through the One Ocean Foundation’s Charta Smeralda.

In 2021 it was purchased by the current owner, AIVE Secretary General Luigi ‘Gigi’ Rolandi, son of the late FIV President Carlo Rolandi, who in between lectures in Experimental High Energy Physics at the Normale University of Pisa, where he teaches, participates in vintage sail rallies.

Bronze went to Ojala II (Susan Carol Holland): an elegant One Tonner designed in 1972 by Sparkman & Stephens and built in 1973 in aluminum, Holland, by Royal Huisman Shipyard.

A spunky English boy is parachuted into the hills of Emilia during World War II. He will never leave Italy again, where he will start a family and found one of Italy’s best-known companies that will allow him to realize his lifelong dream: to have a sailboat and raise his daughter and a group of young people who, still friends after 30 years, race on his Ojalà II keeping his memory alive.

Telling this fantastic story was Michele Frova, a Milanese entrepreneur who first went up Ojalà II in Greece in 1988 and never came down again, becoming its historical memory. “Charles Holland, future father of my childhood friend Susan, was an expert in telephony and radio. In 1942 he was dropped by parachute near Sassuolo, tasked with maintaining contact between partisans and Allied forces. Young and intelligent, after the war ended he decided to stay in Italy, in Milan, where he fell in love with a girl from the good bourgeoisie (Anna Maria Formiggini, ed.) whom he married in 1950.”

Rich in ideas, in postwar Italy, Charles Holland founded a small hearing aid company for the deaf: the famous Amplifon, of which today his wife is president and his daughter vice president. Such was the company’s success that, a few years later, it could afford to commission the prestigious Sparkman&Stephens Studio to design a 10-meter, then built in wood by Carlini of Rimini. Charles had Spanish and Argentine friends to whom he confessed his dream of one day owning a sailboat.

These would playfully tease him, ‘So are you going to sail?” And he would reply, ‘Ojalà!’, which is Spanish for ‘maybe!’ That expression was chosen for the name of his first boat, which he later transferred, making it a “trademark” in the yachting world, to his second boat: in fact, wanting to make a larger boat, he commissioned a One Tonner (christened precisely Ojalà II) from S&S again in 1972. The boat was launched in 1973, built in Holland by Royal Huisman, a leading shipyard in aluminum hulls, which today no longer manufactures anything under 40 meters.

Argentario Sailing Week 2022 – Vintage Marconi – The Winners

Varuna of 1937 (Jens Kellinghusen) wins in the Vintage Marconi category. followed by Stormy Weather of Cowes by Christopher Spray and Comet by Woodward and Fisher.

Maurizia Falone Percivale interviewed the owner of Varuna. Here is what she told him.

“Varuna, god of Waters, reminds me of my Thailand.”

Jens Kellinghusen, a German entrepreneur, is the owner of Varuna of 1937, which placed first in the Vintage Marconi Class at ASW2022.

White-haired, an almost childlike joy in her eyes as she stands on the podium to collect her well-deserved first place, thoughtfully tells us about his meeting with Varuna and his new passion for short races:

“I lived for many years in Southeast Asia and there, in Thailand, at the Royal Varuna Yacht Club in Pattaya, I participated in superb sailing. So Varuna, the god of the waters and the Oceans, your Neptune, represents for me all those good memories of that time.

I fell in love with Varuna in Cogolin (France) in early 2018 because of its elegant lines.

At that time I was looking for a yawl designed by Olin Stephens, the naval designer of my childhood dreams. I meant to participate in Classical events.

We started running with her after 8 months of careful refit, at the Knierim Shipyard in Kiel, Germany. With its correct trim Varuna is a fast and joyful boat, capable of matching the speed of much more modern ones.

In the four days of racing at Argentario Sailing Week 2022, we were really very happy because we were able to set it well for most of the time and also make the right courses.

I enjoy the Classical scene and especially, having done offshore, and often long-distance racing, I enjoy short coastal events, and shore events as they allow and encourage socialization.”(M.F.P.)

Here are all the rankings for Argentario Sailing Week

SUBSCRIBE AND SUPPORT US!

The journalists of the Sailing Newspaper, strive every day to ensure quality, up-to-date and correct information about the boating world free of charge through their websites. If you appreciate our work, support us by subscribing to the magazine. The annual subscription costs only 49 euros and we give you a nice gift

DISCOVER THE SAILING NEWSPAPER YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Daily interviews, boat trials, webinars. The whole sail, minute by minute. But on video! CLICK HERE To sign up, it’s free!

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

To stay up-to-date on all the news from the world of sailing, selected by our editorial staff, sign up for the Sailing Newspaper newsletter! It’s super easy, just enter your email below, agree to the Privacy Policy and click the “Sign Me Up” button. You will then receive on your email, twice a week, the best sailing news! It’s a free service and you can unsubscribe at any time, with no obligation!