“Sailing ruined my life…W sailing!” signed YouTuber Emalloru

Federico Rossi

One of the biggest pieces of crap I have ever believed is that the boat was a symbol of freedom.
It is the most frustrating and wasteful form of self-imposed imprisonment instead.

I set foot on a sailboat for the first time in my life just 2 years ago.
I was invited for a little Puglia/Greece crossing by my friend Francesco Sena on his Peperita, a Comet 11 now turned into a spaceship because of how much quality electronics rained down with his sponsors, bravo to him.
It was mediocre sailing, we did not exceed 3 kn of wind the whole way, and the engine pushed us to 5.5 kn for a 30-odd hour sail.
I had not seen in all my life a starry sky as on that night under sail, bioluminescence banging on the hull, Dolphins chasing us.
My brain exploded.
Arriving in the morning at my destination, I woke up in the forward cabin of her Peperita banging from side to side on the inner bulkheads.
I certainly did not yet know that one could moor there even sheltered from the undertow.
Francis, on the other hand, who should have known long ago, evidently did not either.

I told him that we would have to find a boat for me.
Although everything was wrong during that miserable Gallipoli-Sivota sailing, everything was perfect in my head: I had found the world I wanted.

From there with just €10,000 in my pocket budget began a careless and very improvised search that inevitably led me to stumble upon one of the worst deals ever: my first Pampero Natante.
A 32-foot Rax Cantieri Soxisix that had been stationary on the slip for a few years, with a major problem of water seepage from the Sail Drive, sails now in the way of being considered cardboard, and rigging that if it had been replaced with twine would have had a greater breaking load.
She was perfect.

From there with no idea what I was doing, armed with a set of sailing basics told to me by my mooring neighbors in Marina di Ragusa.
I started going in and out of the Marina on my own almost every day to sail below shore and figure out what the hell I was floating on.
The moorers probably hated me the first few weeks, but with a big move and a small investment of less than a hundred euros I gave a bottle of Pampero (the rum) to each of them, completely changed the approach.
In the end, I’m a good guy.
And incidentally, I also had no idea that Pampero was not a Rum but a cold wind that blows from the west on the SouthAmerican coast.

From that moment, I started sailing nonstop, managing to reconcile my work as a filmmaker on board.
I thus made a much-criticized but also much-loved video entitled “My Disastrous Sailboat Voyage,” which was published on YouTube.
A narrative of how my first real cruise as soon as I bought the boat was a circumnavigation around Sicily, with crew found on the way, and an epilogue where I end up on the rocks in the middle of the night losing my rudder and anchorage, towed in extremis by a fishing boat.
That story had an interesting response, half a million views where the audience was completely split in two.
To some people a dangerous lunatic, to someone else I was completely embracing the spirit of sailing.
The fact is that after that video a large portion of Sailors began writing to me, encouraging me, giving me advice, inviting me aboard in their boats.
Some others threatened to smack me around, but that’s okay.
It was an intense tour de force that put me in the position of sailing 3000 miles in a year always sailing alone even in the middle of winter, touching dozens and dozens of different marinas and running into wonderful people, and unfortunately as in every field, shameless scoundrels.
My sailing ended in Senigallia, I took Pampero to Marco, a very nice 70-year-old bad boy, very first owner who bought her and assembled her himself in 1980, was moved by Pampero’s excellent condition.
Without feigning modesty on that boat I worked on it tirelessly between sailings, and restored her to her initial glory, as much as could be done.

I sold Pampero a few months later because I had realized that sailing, sailing and adventures at sea were inevitably something that would accompany me for the rest of my life.
So I set out to search all over Italy for a vintage iron ocean-going, sturdy boat that I could perhaps sail the world with.

Advised by those who evidently thought they knew how to advise I bought those 21 TONS of scrap iron, wood and rust sight unseen.
Without appraisal, without proof of navigation, putting just 15 minutes on the clock to make sure the inboard engine was still alive.
I’m well aware that for some people to act this way is ridiculous, but I’ll give you some context, I’m 32 years old, I’m particularly impulsive, impatient, and I act enthusiastically to things without ever thinking about the consequences.
I certainly would not make a good business partner, that much is clear.

Pampero II made me experience the other side of what I was doing: an exponential multiplier of financial outlay and frustration in managing the work.
I would gladly list what was wrong with this boat, but it is easier to tell you what is the one thing that (thank goodness) was in excellent condition: the hull.
6mm thick steel on average on a capillary measurement taken on the live work.
I had bet it all on black in the casino, and I had lucked out.
Pretty much that was the feeling.
I found myself after my first year with my first boat, spending my second year as a Sailor inside a boatyard, literally.
The days that boat has found itself on the slip so far have been many more than the days it has found itself with sails set.

And even in navigation, everything was a mess.

From that moment, I took matters into my own hands and made a strict decision not to involve outside professionals, except for operations that were strictly necessary and for which I did not have the tools.
In addition to the desire not to waste the last remaining economic resources unnecessarily, there was also the great need to know every inch of that pile of scrap metal to perfection.
Meanwhile, as the months and repairs went on, other guys joined my ambitious project.
Which I have omitted to say so far to avoid making too ridiculous a story from the very first lines: I want to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and I have set it in my mind as a goal from the first weeks I sailed on the first vessel.

After all, if you know the proverb about eating an elephant one step at a time, I don’t see why this would go wrong.

I have spent the last 6 months paying a shipyard that was supposed to guarantee me the ocean-going seaworthiness of this boat.
And the result is to end up with an axle that still makes enough water to flood the cauldron, an engine that oozes so much oil that I can’t figure out where the leak is coming from, and brand-new electronics that by mysteries about how it was installed blows out the entire electrical panel.

And after a financial outlay on the work now exceeding the purchase price of the boat itself, we find ourselves at anchor stranded in the middle of a bay in Syracuse, with the engine gone for good because the professional who was supposed to make sure the engine was in proper condition failed to notice that the timing belt already had too many wear and tear.
Getting distracted happens.

At times like these, my traveling companion Lorenzo and I, stranded here at anchor for 10 days now and with recent calls chock-full of strangers’ names with “used engine” next to them, think that maybe this whole story of freedom sailing is just a grand narrative being passed down to us from film and literature.
Today it seems the most frustrating and wasteful form of self-imposed imprisonment.
And anything that gives me the perception of being imprisoned is perhaps bringing me one step closer to the freedom I seek.

I like to think of it that way, otherwise the alternative explanation is that like every single shipowner on this planet, I have simply gone off the deep end.

Emanuel Malloru