Don’t miss the exhibition on Giulio Cesare Carcano (and his legendary boats)

On display from Friday, Jan. 25 to Monday, Jan. 28, at the Yacht Club Italiano headquarters is a beautiful retrospective of the work of the very great Giulio Cesare Carcano, designer of unique and highly sought-after boats. Don’t miss it (there is also a lecture on his life at 7:30 p.m. on Friday 25, which will also be very interesting): documents, photographs, some of his most important motorcycles-including the one that stunned the world, the famous 8-cylinder 500 cc, a rowing ‘four con’ and, on the water, the legendary Vampa, his first design for offshore racing; designed in 1967 and launched in 1968 by the Donoratico Shipyard.

GIULIO CESARE CARCANO (1910-2005)
And then there is Carcano … Few figures in yachting in the past century have had the flair and vision of the engineer from Lombardy – born in 1910 – who left such important footprints in sailing, and in the history of design. From mechanics, his is the V7 engine that still forms the basis of Moto Guzzi’s productions, the two-man bobsleigh for the 1956 Olympics, through rowing to the long theory of ‘strange’ boats, all characterized by the name beginning with V, and ending with A

“You see, dear Risso, I was sitting at the Guzzi clubhouse in Mandello Lario and I was watching the ‘4 con’ boys training and I had noticed that the canoe’s wake was slightly uneven; I suggested a small modification.” This “small” modification suggested to those boys, placing the first and fourth oars on one side and the two middle oars on the other, won them gold at the 1956 Games. Everyone in the world has been rowing like this ever since.

In these 3 lines there is all the humility of genius and the essence of an eclectic character who has given so much to our country, but whom few people know yet, with the possible exception of Moto Guzzi enthusiasts and sailors over 50.

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Giulio Cesare Carcano was born in Milan on November 20, 1910, and, also in Milan, graduated from the Politecnico in 1934 at the age of 24. As a boy, he spent his summer vacations in Mandello del Lario and thus was drawn to the affairs of the Moto Guzzi (still a center of attraction in that area). He then joined the Moto Guzzi technical staff in 1936. Linked to the name of Giulio Cesare Carcano are all the designs – racing and road – that consolidated in the postwar period the worldwide reputation of Moto Guzzi created by Carlo Guzzi in the company’s first two decades.

In the field of racing, Carcano devised winning technical solutions with both one- and eight-cylinder engines, in both cases successfully exasperating the opposing trends of racing technology.

Similar philosophy guided him in the design and planning of sailboats, starting with Volpina, his first 5.5 S.I with which he appeared on the starting line of the Helsinki World Cup as a genuine underdog. It was 1961, and relative to the performance of I-30 (this is the number on the engineer’s mainsail) journalist Bruno Ziravello concluded an article on the Italian crew with these enlightened words, “He slowly began to make regattas that at first were not very satisfactory then he began to annoy….”

From Helsinki onward, Carcano devoted himself to designing a long series of boats that were unlike anything seen up to that time. Volpina, Vihuela, Vampa, Vanessa, Villanella, Vanilla… And Vinca, definitely the odd one out. He was ahead of Carcano, and he knew it. He maniacally designed everything, optimized weights, studied shapes and appendages, experimented with materials, devised stern-hung rudders, pioneered light displacement, and used fractional arms resulting in boats with amazing shapes and astounding performance, especially in carrying gaits. Tradition has it that major contemporary designers have been inspired by him, as it is not difficult, now, to glimpse in the lines of his boats, the current Open Oceans.

‘But since I don’t do this work for a living, I either do things the way I say or not at all’. This was the ‘Carcano recipe’ that guided his thinking and perhaps lay behind his success: intellectual independence.

Giulio Cesare Carcano was an active member of the Italian Yacht Club from 1960 to 2005, the year of his passing.

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