In the mountains of Slovakia the Italians lead the world on Vaurien!

“Rascal,” “Worthless,” “dead chest,” the Vaurien has been told all kinds of things.
Yet after 70 years, the deadly barque on which everyone learned to sail, from the Glénans to Caprera, never ceases to amaze.

Graziani-Belli Vaurien world champions!

In a place as wonderfully far from all the most legendary stretches of water in sailing as Lake Liptov, at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, between Slovakia and Poland, 55 crews from all over the world and a host of enthusiasts once again gathered July 13-19 for that extraordinary feast of sailing that is the Vaurien Worlds, now in its 63rd (!) edition. A World Championship ended with the rainbow title to Italians Francesco Graziani and Marta Delli.

Vaurien, the boat for everyone

The Vaurien, with its essential nature as a “pure” sailboat (no more than 13 blocks, tonnage and strict measurements to the millimeter) but with all the maneuvers that can exist on a boat (dear old spi to tame, in times of Gennaker hoisting and Code Zero science) is the boat for everyone, from the neophyte learning what the “centers” are and how to interpret the wind, to the experienced sailor, perhaps Olympic champion, in love with its essentiality, with the pleasure of bringing sailing skills back to the center, in times of estrogen sailing. Designed in 1951 by Frenchman Jean Jacques Herbulot, the spread of the Vaurien in Italy has one true protagonist.
Luciano Gavazzi: the dinghy, 4.08 m long and 1.47 m wide (for a weight of 70 kg) experienced rapid diffusion since the early 1960s in France because of its cheapness and simplicity of utizzo, and Gavazzi, with his small shipyard in Castiglioncello, pushed it to Italy.
Until 1990 he was the only licensed builder in the Boot. Since 1963, Gavazzi has given birth to 1,530 Vauriens (first made of acajou wood, then fiberglass), 3 of which have won a world title. Back to the World Championship in Slovakia and the 7 Italian crews present who told a new episode in a great little story of passion and sailing.

Who are the world champions

Beginning with Francesco Graziani and Marta Delli, the two Tuscan lions class of ’68 and ’71 from Marina di Pisa, a lifetime for sailing, souls of vaurienists, affiliated with the Club Nautico di Marina di Carrara, tenacious and constant, great and fine connoisseurs of the boat, the wind, and sailing, who managed to line up Spaniards, Frenchmen, and the rest of the fleet. “It all started as a small challenge: to go back to do a major regatta together, Marta and I, and see where we were,” Francis, already a vice world champion in 2019, tells us. – after we had been more on the dinghy training than in the boat for a few years. And so, here we are at the World Cup where you find yourself on a wonderfully complicated adventure: you’d go out paddling in the sun and then halfway through a trial you had 20 knots in the midst of two storms, constant wind shifts, changes of direction. A five-day long merry-go-round. In short, in the boat this week you had to know how to go, and the crew chemistry was put to the test! And then you find out that in the class like a few years ago there are people in the class who go a lot in the boat, who train, like Cabello or Campos, the Spanish friends, the French and Peter (Lakshmanan, German – ed.) who is very fast; the top fifteen are all people who really know how to go in the boat. We were careful and smart, always focused on not taking dangerous chances. Always placed in the top five. In the end, first! It also helped that we knew this enchanting lake among the woods but often sailing indecipherable, where we had been so many years ago, and also the typical follies of the lake. I am a sailor but I learned on the lake and so many great sailors were born on the lake. Nothing is ever taken for granted on the lake. But the really great thing is that at the Worlds there were so many kids, young, very young, lots of girls (half the crews were Juniors and Mixed – ed.), all to keep up with. A living class with its beautiful convivial spirit, but so much sailing expertise and curiosity to grow. A great sign. Sure we are an amateur class, but here you learn the basics and test what you know. A Worlds allows you, if you’re a kid starting out, maybe in Feva or even if you’re on the Twenty novice, to race with experienced people; a 15-year-old goes around the buoy with an experienced adult. You have to know the boat. There is a very high formative value. You also need it for ‘the other sailing’ that you do. If you like, that’s a bit of my story: I was born on the 470 – and that’s where the top of sailing passed through in the 1980s – then I fell in love with the Vaurien, with its simplicity, and I’ve never detached myself from it, even though I’ve been in other classes, I’ve done offshore and lately I’ve been following the youth competitive team in Marina di Carrara, on the Feva and the Twenty. Maybe the secret of this success is also a bit there, being with the kids has forced me to travel at their level, taught me a new immediacy in sailing… you grow together; a mutual exchange, come on!”

The other Italians

Francesco and Marta’s challenge at the Worlds is also that of the four Italian crews in the top fifteen, which means that, under the radar, in the folds of the circles, Vaurien remains a deep passion for its essential simplicity, its Gascon spirit but, above all, its inclusiveness, where sailing always means learning and sharing knowledge; and then maybe even trying to put the bow ahead of the friend’s.
This is a bit like the story of Tommi Fossati and Niccolò Cocucci, Junior bronze medalists, 18 and 17 years old, one helmsman on RS500, the other bowman 29er, “Celts” from Alto Lario but passionate vaurienists. “When there’s a lot of wind,” says Tommi, “it’s easy to go fast and stay ahead of others, on the Vaurien as on a skiff; then the wind drops and, if you’re in the Vaurien, you find that there are people going faster than you without understanding why. And that’s where you figure out if you really know how to run the boat; in its essentiality, it’s a very technical boat; you have options to choose from, decisions you can make, on adjustments, on steering, on strategy. You never stop leading. Going faster than others in Vaurien is much harder! We got together with people our age or younger, from all over Europe, who go in Twenty, in Laser, in other classes, and here you compare yourself on the fundamentals; then maybe you talk about it in the evening at dinner, after catching twenty knots in your face, cursing a little because you were about to lose your rudder and Nicco ends up with a bloody finger in repairing it in the waves-4 stitches, the ones we need for second place Junior! -, being back at sunset with the sun going down through the woods, wandering the legendary German-Dutch-Spanish party. A wonderful atmosphere….”

Everyone likes the Vaurien in Italy

The Vaurien World Championship in Slovakia has thus confirmed that it is that event full of excitement, encounter and passion that it has always been but also a technical and sporting space of excellence where there is room for everyone and where, no matter what, everyone can I can be there because it is a space of growth for everyone. “The sporting balance is very positive for us,” explains Roberto Franchini, President of AS Vaurien Italia, “we have a first overall and then crews on the podium in the Master, Mixed, and Junior categories, but beyond that, behind Francesco and Marta who are legendary ‘privateers’ of the class, our fleet brought to the World Championship many new vaurienists, who participated for the first time.
It is the vanguard of a movement that is growing, indicative of a great effervescence in the base, -there are more than 350 racers in Italy associated with the Class in the last 4 years, from 12 to 70 years old, who animate 5 national regattas, 2 zonal championships and many local regattas, while the Vaurien remains in so many clubs, in Lazio, in Tuscany, on Lake Como, the open school boat to teach anyone to sail -, which aggregates enthusiasts who approach sailing and are led first to the first zonals, then to the nationals and finally to the Worlds, not as a point of arrival but as a further moment of comparison and growth, each according to their skills and ambitions.
In Litpov the youngest racer was Emiliano Cevela, class of 2011, from Rome, who with dad Roberto is making a path of growth that started two years ago and that will surely land in Bracciano 2025, where as a class and together with Circolo Vela Bracciano we are organizing the next Vaurien World Championship that we want to be not only a great technical and sporting event, where we expect about ninety crews, but also an all-round convivial event with many opportunities to meet about sailing.”