Raul Gardini Story | The man who made sailors out of Italians

Now that the America’s Cup, with the announcement of the Prada Cup and the excitement around Luna Rossa, is back in the spotlight, we want to remember when Italy, really, relished the chance to raise the “old jug” to the sky. It has now been 28 years since Moro di Venezia’s “near feat,” reaching the Cup final and winning one of the races in the final match against the Americans-a “near feat” that would not have been possible without Raul Gardini. The man who made the Italian people “sailor”: in 1992, there was more than just soccer and cars being talked about in bars. They talked about bowsprits, rips, tacking.

In two installments, we bring you the fine article Antonio Vettese wrote for the Raul Gardini Foundation in The Sailing Times.

HELLO RAUL

“I really like being inside the elements, in nature. Above all, I love the wind and everything it brings with it. I like to understand where it comes from: I need it in the boat, I need it in hunting and in business. You have to be ready to change course when the wind changes.” Raul Gardini was a man who knew nature, who had assimilated the magic of the sea and the wind on the Adriatic coast, breathing in those atmospheres of great emotional dynamics, which can go from total becalmedness made of silk and fog to the howl of the bora or the gusts of the Garbino. “For me as a boy, the sea was freedom, and I always had a drive toward that freedom.”

For Raul, sailing was not only a daily passion, to be nurtured every day with new dreams of victories and sailings, it was a life companion. He started going out to sea like every boy in and around Ravenna to live each summer in symbiosis with the pine forest, the beach, the fishermen, the smell of grilled white fish. The first mainsails he hoists are that of the dinghy, of the Finn, the grueling Olympic drift that one leads alone.

The first offshore boat, that is, intended for deep-sea racing, of which he is the owner is called Blue Nose. The name is inspired by that, Bluenose, of one of the fastest schooners in history, winner of many regattas, one of the first boats to be built with speed in mind. Raul’s Blue Nose is a project of Dick Carter’s Tina series: it has one just like it Herbert von Karajan, the sailing conductor with whom he will remain friends for years. It is only 37 feet long, just over eleven meters-a size that is small for current customs. The first original, i.e., directly commissioned, design is that of Orca 43, this is another Dick Carter design that would soon become the prototype of a successful and widespread small series on the Adriatic coast built by Crespellano Shipyards then Cantieri del Pardo. With Orca 43 Raul wins the Mediterranean Championship, Middle Sea Race and Porto Cervo races. The Middle Sea Race then is a very important event: it is run in the Mediterranean but is as long as the Fastnet Race, a unique and famous regatta of the British seas. Anyone who completes a race at least 600 miles long is eligible for membership in the Rorc, Royal Ocean Racing Club, a historic club for the world of long-distance racing from the coast.

During these years Raul Gardini met Angelo Vianello, the man who would become for him much more than a captain of his boats: he is from Veneto, a sailor, a good drinker. Angel at sea and on land becomes an authentic Guardian Angel: always watchful and present, he listens sees and provides. In short, in those years of sea life lived together, a solid friendship was born that would never be broken. Historic a joke Raul would administer to reporters many years later during the America’s Cup aboard the splendid fisherman Todd. The name is that of another Gardini inseparable: a Labrador retriever, also a hunting companion. Raul answers the question of journalist Carlo Marincovich of Repubblica: why doesn’t he participate in the big offshore races, the Atlantic crossings? “Look … without thinking about the smells that form below deck after a few hours, Angelo and I consume about a liter of white per mile, we should fill the bilge with crazy weight. Do you have any idea?”

After Blue Nose and Orca 43 to enter the world firmly in the world of big races, her goal is the Admiral’s Cup, it takes more: a first class that translated into meters is just over fifteen. Raul Gardini asked the trusty Dick Carter for a new design, which was built in Rimini by Carlini shipyards in laminated wood. The construction system is borrowed from aeronautics and allows for lightweight yet strong constructions. It is 73, the boat is called Naif, and its photos go around the world because, for the times, it is highly innovative with its two rudder wheels and proportions. It is a boat designed for the harsh conditions of the Admiral’s Cup where it participates and is part of the Italian team with Giorgio Carriero’s Sagittarius, designed by the very young German Frers who will prove to be the best, and Serena Zaffagni’s Mabelle, another Carter design. The skipper is Cino Ricci, the Californian designer is also the helmsman of Naif, this is one of the first times that Italy participates with an official team in the great British regatta, once the big international event that could not be missed. The team standings are won by the German team, the Italians only ninth.

Raul realizes that the world of handicap racing (the rankings are compiled using a multiplier that tries to put different boats on an equal footing) does not appeal to him very much: he wants to get to the finish line first, to race faster than others. To do this, one must navigate a maxi. Serafino Ferruzzi gives him the green light to build a large new boat. Raul and Arturo Ferruzzi fly to New York where young German Frers, who had worked at Sparkman & Stephens and is the rising star, convinces them…. So on his drawing board one of the most beautiful racing sailboats of the 20th century takes shape: it will be called Il Moro di Venezia, it will be built by Carlini as Naif, it will be made of wood.

In those months Raul and Tilli Antonelli, one of the boys who slaved over Naif and who would found the Adriatic Shipyards from which Pershing was born, flew with some excitement to Cowes to see the first drawings of the Moor. In Cowes Raul also knows another great sailing companion: Gabriele Rafanelli; he lives there and runs the best nautical store, on the main street of the historic sailing capital village, a few hundred meters before the inaccessible temple of sailing, the Royal Yacht Squadron.

At that time, the reservoir of sailors for Gardini’s boats is the Circolo Velico Ravennate, which for a lifetime remains a home refuge for Raul and Angelo, always looking for atmospheres of the Wild Adriatic to charge their batteries: the dawn coffee, the boat outing with Moretto, a fifth class Ior that arrived together with the Moro as a utility to participate in the winter championships or the Idacarissima folk boat on which they go out alone to meditate and decide. Gardini also had Rumegal, a 17-meter Frers design that won the Middle Sea Race in 79 but which did not excite him as much as the Moro and which he sold almost immediately, built of wood.

When the Moro di Venezia first arrives at the Real Club Nautico in Palma de Majorca, habitually frequented by the royal family, it is the boat to watch. The news. Early one morning a tall, elegant gentleman slips aboard without much preamble–for him there are never any secrets, wherever he goes in Spain is always his home. Below deck the view is not exactly tidy: the crew returned from the revelry of the Spanish night sleeps half-naked, there is an atmosphere of goliardia, in short, not exactly Chanel perfume. Angelo Vianello, who in that case is authentic lion tamer, first curses with the boys then realizes who the visitor is and changes his tone: his exit in the cockpit is memorable “sior Re ghe faxo un cafetin.” Juan Carlos of Bourbon, who knows Italian as well as Venetian laughs, and Angelo’s joke will remain one of the most told anecdotes in sailing history.

There are also difficult times in the life of the Moor of Venice, such as participating in the tragic 1979 Fastnet Race, and Angelo plays a key role in bringing the Moor home in a gale: by the time the gale breaks out, the big boats have already passed the rock that gives the race its name and are already running with the wind at their backs, in short facing a less dangerous sea than the smaller hulls have to endure. Angelo remains many hours tied to the rudder; he is virtually the only one of the crew who retains physical strength. The legendary Peter Blake, later to be an America’s Cup opponent, races as hard as he can and takes his Condor of Bermuda, a round-the-world boat and rough times, to break the record and win in real time.

In the 1980s Raul Gardini experimented with the boats of another great California designer, Doug Peterson to which he has the Moro Blu designed, a boat with which he will never get into great harmony, and he also buys the one-tonner Svuzzlebubble that he keeps in Marina di Ravenna to participate in local regattas and renames Cochè.

The world of maxis is a world charged with relationships, intense in every way, where through sailing important friendships are built. It is also why Raul shares the project of a new Moor of Venice with Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The design is still by German Frers, with minor differences born Gitana (which has a higher freeboard) and the Moor of Venice II, are constructed of light alloy. The boat is gorgeous, but it’s not enough–to win. The decision to make a maxi slightly smaller than the others does not prove successful in the world championships. Raul Gardini, on the other hand, wants to win and puts a new project in the pipeline: again German Frers, again light alloy construction. The Moor of Venice III finally won the world maxi in San Francisco in 1989. The helmsman is Paul Pierre Cayard, a young and handsome American from California and a student of the great Americans, especially the legendary Tom Blackaller. The victory of that world championship is also the beginning of a new adventure: “we found ourselves at the bar to celebrate,” Gardini will recount, “I Paul Cayard, German Frers and Angelo Vianello. We decided that at that point we could attempt the America’s Cup challenge, there was the winning team.”

T.O

… CONTINUED …