Sailor of the Year 2024 celebration, shot after shot PHOTOS

Thirty-five thousand votes, 50 nominees, seven categories (plus a special prize), only one overall winner, hundreds of people, great sailors and ordinary enthusiasts enjoying the show. The 2024 Sailor of the Year awards ceremony was held at Marina Cala de Medici, once again a great celebration of sailing for all and a celebration of pure talent and the many faces of sailing.

Conducting the ceremony on stage were our own Mauro Giuffrè and Rachele Vitello. Overall victory for Mini Transat winner Luca Rosetti. Our account of the award ceremony, in pictures.

The Sailor of the Year 2024 – Sailing’s big party

Where to start when recounting the Sailor of the Year 2024 by Raymarine, the big sailing party at the Marina in Cala de’ Medici, hundreds of people enjoying the show, from the great sailors, to the many enthusiasts?

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Medea’s smile

From a smile, irresistible, that of Medea Falcioni, winner of the Sailor of the Year in the Young category: thirteen years old, crystal-clear talent, atomic energy starting with the physical (already the handshake is that of a rugby pylon) but above all human, incredibly contagious.

She has all the tenderness of a little girl, but she already exudes the power of one destined for great things. He arrives with a beaming and overjoyed mother, we try to take a picture of him together but Medea immediately takes charge, “Impossible my mother never has her picture taken, I don’t think there are any pictures of her….”

Okay, let’s try daddy then…. “Yes, yes, he does.” He picks him up and hugs him, brings him to us: he is so excited that he has become solid, still. In short, it is Medea (repeat, 13 years old) who organizes the issue. Why did he win the sailor of the year award? Because she has already won the IQFoiL Under 15 Youth Olympic Sailing Boards World Championships and came out on top at the Under 15 and U17 European Championships ahead of opponents far older than her. And especially because it represents in the clearest possible way the most beautiful, young, powerful, pure sail. The sail of the future.

Luca Rosetti, the Breton of Bologna

Also clear was the victory of the first among the first, first overall as Sailor of the Year 2024: Luca Rosetti. Clear because he came out ahead of everyone at the Mini Transat (4,000 miles from France to the Caribbean!) on a boat where there is little to hide: the Mini is 6.5 meters long and you sail it alone in the Ocean. If you win it means you are strong.

Period. A 29-year-old Bolognese, he races for Circolo Vela Cervia, but to look at him he looks like a full-blooded Breton sailor. He is not of many words, but he has certainly succeeded in shutting up the very French who have been dictating the law there in the Ocean for decades (but who will now have to contend with a fleet of increasingly strong “italiens”).

Luca is an all-around talent, coming from dinghies and knows how to sail and win on boats big and small. Along the docks of Cala de Medici, sailors recognized him, stopped him. He is not of many words, we used to say, but when he starts talking about sailing and sailing he becomes a raging river: mesmerizing sailor’s tales, real sailor’s tales. All of us, after all, are a little “ministries.”

And he is our myth.“One of the secrets,” he tells us. Is the 1% theory. If you, every day, strive to improve by one percent, after 100 days you will have improved by 100 percent“.

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Marco Trombetti and the power of dreams

Marco Trombetti, winner of the Owner’s Award, captivated the audience with an emotional and thrilling account of his great around-the-world adventure with Translated 9, an old Swan 65 with which he participated in the Ocean Globe Race, the round-the-world crewed round-the-world race.

“I had never been aboard a sailboat before…” then, however, he put together a crew of young people, overwhelmingly nonprofessionals, and won the first two legs (first time an Italian boat has succeeded in doing so) of the around-the-world race, which is run as it was done at the first Whitbread, by sextant, without any technological aids.

He then had to first stop in the Falklands for adventurous repairs and then withdraw (skeg breakage) on the next stage. “Despite this, we still managed to finish the regatta. It was even more important than winning the stages. We have shown what the strength that comes from believing fully in one’s dreams can do“. And if we are all minists, surely we are also all with Marco Trombetti with his romantic way of wanting to be a shipowner.

Matteo Polli aka designing boats that win

The Innovation award went to “the sailing engineer”: Matteo Polli. Gorizian by birth, “mule” Triestine sailing “mule” graduated with honors from Southampton in Yacht and Powercraft Design. Why did he win sailor of the year?

Because he won more than anyone else. While he did his first offshore racing when IMS reigned as the tonnage system, he then led the way in the IRC and especially ORC world.

His boats, from the early 2emmemarine and then Italia Yachts and Grand Soleil, have been and still are always at the top of the charts. In addition to being a designer Matteo is also a true sailor (Laser training) and in racing he is a great mainsailer.

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Beppe Veirana: “I won because I am beautiful.”

“Why did I win? Because I am beautiful. Then, in fact, Samuel Augustine did it all.“. With great sympathy, this is how Beppe Veirana, winner of the Most Voted category, i.e., the most voted candidate among those submitted by the public, recounted his success. 59-year-old is a web star, 214,00 followers, all sailors and all sea and sailing enthusiasts.

Samuele Agostino, his friend and social media manager, on the other hand, is 22 years old, and together they create viral content in which Beppe teaches the basics of sailing and rattles off pearls of seafaring culture. Beppe is Ligurian DOC and in his videos he also tells the basics of making pesto and recognizing “real” focaccia.

But above all, he is a great sailor; in 1992 he founded Dimensione Vela to do sailing school, charters and sailing licenses.

For the love of the sea and lakes

Under the banner of sustainability are the awards presented to Manuel Vlacich and Franco Deganutti and then to Enrico Bertacchi.

The first are the Sailors of the Year 2024 in the Passion category. and since 2022 they have launched their sailing “Grand Tour”: they have participated with their Melges 24 in the world’s most crowded regattas (the Bol d’Or on Lake Geneva, the Round the Island at the Isle of Wight, the Barcolana) and have then, with their tiny Tiwal dinghies tackled the most extreme waters: such as Lake Titicaca (the highest in the world three navigable ones), the most “dangerous,” Loch Ness.

“Our next goal? – told Vlacich on stage – is to sail to Greenland, to Disko Bay: 350 km north of the Arctic Circle to circumnavigate one of the icebergs that break off from the glaciers.” Why do they do it? To raise awareness of climate change.

Enrico Bertacchi, on the other hand, is secretary of the Caprera Sailing Center and collected the special “Save The Med” award for the M.A.R.E. Project, which was born from the initiative of the Caprera Sailing Center in collaboration with One Ocean Foundation. M.A.R.E (Marine Adventure for Research & Education) is a very special citizen science project that aims to monitor the health of the Mediterranean Sea to promote knowledge and protection of the marine environment.

“There is no future without innovation.”

Finally, let us conclude with the most important of the awardees, the others, we are sure, will not be offended: Gianni Cariboni won the Lifetime Achievement Sailor of the Year Epic award, and he is just one of the few in the boating world who can carry the weight of the adjective “epic” without embarrassment.

His company is just now turning 40 years old during which it has become a world leader in hydraulics and hydraulics applied to sailing. There is no America’s Cup or super custom boat that does not mount a Cariboni system. He invented the canting keel and he is the one who made the vision of easy sailing a reality.

He is 75 years old but still shows no signs of wanting to quit: “I have so much fun doing my job that I really don’t see why I shouldn’t do it.” Excitedly, upon receiving the award, he wanted to emphasize that “Thereis no future without innovation” because Gianni is an inventor, a man in love with research.

His design philosophy? “Building things until they are about to break. But they don’t break“. A life on the edge then, an epic career.

Check out all the photos from the Sailor of the Year award ceremony, you can find them at the link below! Feel free to download and share them!

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Luca Sordelli