After the retreat: Ambrogio Beccaria a sailor like everyone else

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Ambrogio Beccaria (left) and his fraternal friend Alberto Riva, wrecked at Quebec Saint Malo

Fresh from withdrawing from the Quebec-Saint Malo (the 2897-mile race in the North Atlantic from Canada to France) due to a flaw on his Class 40 AllaGrande Pirelli, Ambrogio Beccaria allowed himself to engage in this intense reflection.

There is a whole sense of sailing, of “his” sailing, in these thoughts. There is all the apprehension for his fraternal friend (now rival) Alberto Riva, shipwrecked with Acrobatica, but above all the realization that shipwreck can happen toanyone, even the best of sailors. And one should not be afraid to be afraid. In the midst of the sea, fear can be a force. These are important words, not least because, Ambrose writes,“Otherwise I end up looking immortal and indestructible, and that doesn’t seem like a good model, or at least I don’t want to be seen like this.”


Ambrogio Beccaria ‘s open letter

It is early morning, 25 knots, 2 meters wave. We sail with mainsail the full, j1 and j2, 150 meters, 2 square meters of sails. The boat sails between 25 and 35 degrees of heel and at an average speed of 18 knots, peaking at 25.

Life on board is definitely uncomfortable. For anything other than adjusting the sails or steering you have to use one hand, the other is to keep you balanced. Legs equal, they are almost useless, you live on your knees so you don’t fall with every wave.

We finally hooked the tail end of a depression that is making up a lot of miles on the leaders, it will be hard to pass them but this wind was unhoped for and we might as well try. So we attack at full throttle.

Then the news that freezes my blood. Acrobatics is wrecked, I can’t finish the message because I have tears blurring my vision. I catch my breath and finish the message, “they are safe and aboard the freighter.”

I am at the charting and a terrible anguish grips me. I thought it was a game, I thought these things stayed in the books, I wasn’t ready for a shipwreck of Alberto Riva and his crew, I almost felt guilty that I wasn’t shipwrecked myself.

How many times have I passed by such a risk? Perhaps it ended a way of my sailing, arrogant and carefree. Until that moment I always felt immortal, but this opened my eyes. It can happen to anyone, even the best sailors you know, because Albi is the best sailor I know. If I were to go on a round-the-world, Atlantic or Southern Ocean crossing, he would be the first person I would call.

Part of me always wanted to think that there were no such dangers, partly so as not to weigh even more heavily on the people you love on the ground. Already leaving is difficult, plus you have to admit that it is dangerous. It is too much.

The anguish does not subside and I decide to get 2 hours of sleep in the cot to try to calm down, Julien and Bastian(Bastian Oger, boat captain, and Julien Villon were Beccaria’s boat mates at Quebec Saint Malo), ed. understand that I need a moment to recover.

I haven’t slept, and I actually don’t think I’ve recovered, even now that I’m down. When I think back to the shipwreck, my voice breaks again and my eyes fill up, even on land. It is true they are fine, and that is the most important thing but for me sailing will not be the same as before, it will not be so light.

24 hours pass in which I struggle to put my thoughts in order. Julien wakes me up by saying there is water in the bow. I get dressed, put on my boots but am strangely quiet. In the bow I find a crack in the crash box and there are 200 liters inside now. That crack once would have turned my stomach, after all the effort and energy we put into trying to win this regatta-how unfair this crack is! I have only once withdrawn from a regatta, it was solo, the 2019 Pornichet Select.

Three hundred miles and the autopilot abandons me, I return to port in despair with this feeling of injustice inside me.

This time, however, this crack is almost liberating. Finishing a regatta in which Albi and his crew were shipwrecked seemed unfair to me., so we too are forced to stop, to save the boat we set course for the Azores, Faial Island. We had wondered many times what it would be like to race against each other, and in the end we never got around to it.

Ironically, in Faial we meet the Acrobatics crew who have just disembarked from the freighter that rescued them. Hugging Tommi, Jean and Albi is the first thing that gives me relief after 4 days.

They have clothes bought at a flea market in Flores, a mini-island in the Azores. Quebec Saint-Malo’s winter clothes do not fit. They look disguised, seeming to have done so on purpose to dilute the tension of the shipwreck.

I needed to write down what happened, again for the same reason that I make a point of sharing here when I win, but also when I’m gripped by anguish and lose my bearings, or else I end up looking immortal and indestructible, and that doesn’t seem like a good model, or at least I don’t want to be seen that way.

Now begins a chapter in the AllaGrande Pirelli saga that we do not know about and that was not on the agenda. But perhaps it is precisely these difficult routes that bring out the best in us.

Ambrogio Beccaria

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