Your Classic Boat could be heir to a great racing queen. And the odds increase if, behind his project, there is a very famous name: Andrea Vallicelli.
Father of so many of the boats that made Italian sailing great – like
Brava
and Azzurra, to name a few – Vallicelli is the creator of a whole pantheon of small masterpieces, many of them born one-off, winning racing boats, later mass-produced. A typical feature of the time, this, together with the growing passion, contributed to the sailing boom of the 1970s and 1980s. From the small nine meters to the bulkiest Two Tonner, here are five large Classic Boats derived from winning designs by Vallicelli.
Ziggurat / Ziggurat 916 | Half Tonner; 1975 – 76 (9.15 & 9.16 m)
It is the boat from which everything is born. Still a college student, Andrea Vallicelli, with Vittorio Mariani and Nicola Sironi, designs a fifth IOR class with which to participate in the 1976 Half Ton Cup in Trieste. The design, while inspired, deviates partially from the American lessons of Carter and Peterson , both in reduced displacement and in more pronounced stern sections. An icon of Italian sailing, the Ziggurat, is born.
ZigguratHalf tonner fast and boliniero, Ziggurat immediately earned third place overall with a big win in the last race of the cycle, the offshore race. The boat was purchased immediately and, at the same time, CPR Shipyards decided to mass produce it. Thus was born a great success of homegrown mass production, the
Ziggurat 916
, a very valid boat.
Gattone / V-Cat 38 | One Tonner; 1976 (11.25 & 11.38 m)
Participating in Vallicelli’s debut, immediately following the Ziggurat, is the Big Cat. Designed with Carlo Alberto Tiberio (co-owner of the Artmare shipyard), the Gattone is this time a One Tonner and features slightly more extreme solutions and shapes than its predecessor, with a more bowed maximum beam and narrower stern. Second boat and second winning streak, with victories in theMediterranean Championship, Giraglia, and Copa del Rey.
In the same year Artmare started its mass production. Slightly longer, the V-Cat 38 was born, available in single or double cockpit versions.
Classic Boats. Argento Vivo / Canados 33 | 3/4 Tonner; 1977 (10.15 & 10.08 m)
Within a year of its early beginnings, two shipowners allowed the fledgling Vallicelli Studio to make the leap. Pigi Vagliani and Riccardo Trionfi commission a new project, intended for the Three Quarter Ton Cup in La Rochelle. Argento Vivo, a medium displacement all round hull made of laminated wood by De Cesari, is born.
He would win the Italian championship two years in a row, finishing second at the Three Quarter Ton Cup in La Rochelle. This will result in the Canados 33, from the Roman Canados shipyards.
Canados 37 / Excelsior | One Tonner; 1979 (11.29 & 11.30 m)
Here the case is slightly different, although similar. After the success of the Canados 33, the Roman shipyard commissioned a second boat to be mass produced. The Canados 37 was born, a hull with a racing spirit in which the canons of the American school and its medium-heavy displacements are combined with the teachings of those instead from New Zealand, more set on light displacements. The design, which comes in two different versions, a cruising and a racing version, is particularly eagerly anticipated, especially in view of the nearby One Ton Cup, in Naples in 1980. It will be here that the Excelsior, a 37 series ‘fittato’ racing yacht, will demonstrate the great gifts of the hull, fighting to the last for the first places, wrested finally by Filo da Torcere, a very similar one-off, also by Vallicelli.
Classic Boats. Blue Show / Show 42 | Two Tonner; 1979 – 81 (12.42 m & 12.62)
Designed after the great successes of Brava and Filo da Torcere, Blu Show is a laminated Two Tonner, made by Pezzini of Viareggio and intended for the Italian team participating in the 1980 Sardinia Cup. The design is characterized by less tapered water lines than previously and a more vertical bow profile, a sign of times beginning to change, as evidenced also by the square, sharper-knee stern. In 1981, its mass production was launched, resulting in Show 42. This longer one carries with it lessons learned from racing, thus presenting different, softer and longer stern sections.
Three “tidbits” about Classic Boats
- Want to learn more about the world of Classic Boats (1967-1998), the iconic boats of the period, the legendary designers, the stories and races of the “golden age” of sailing? Check out our section dedicated to Classic Boats!
- Do you have a Classic Boat to sell? Put it (for free) on our classifieds market!
