King Raul of Ravenna: the story of Raul Gardini

Raul Gardini is remembered for the exploits of the Moro di Venezia in theAmerica’s Cup.
But Gardini is not just that; he was the undisputed pioneer of sailing in the last century. We tell you about his epic, adventurous, fascinating, full of anecdotes, splendid boats, and men out of the chorus. Like the figure of the faithful sailor Angelo.

The story of Raul Gardini, undisputed sailing pioneer of the last century

It must have been supposedly around the time of Tangentopoli, actually no, a few years earlier.
It was cracking up.
The breakwater – just high enough not to let even a puff of the albeit oppressive libeccio show through – at Cala Galera didn’t give you a breath on that fiery midday.
What’s more, the splice had its own thing going for it: it didn’t want to know how to close even cursing worse than a Turk.
I had told my mother that I was a brothel manager: I was ashamed to say I was a rigger, a rigger in short.
I raise my head to unwind from the Rubik’s cube that is the splicing when I see beyond the high embankment of the dam, sunk in the Mediterranean haze, a tree, in fact two, no three trees even.
I say to myself, “I really drank too much tonight.”
I think I’m seeing things through my eyes: “…’but what is this, a rerun of the Bounty mutiny?”
Instead it was really 3 trees 3!
I say to myself, “1 tree tot money; 3 trees equals tot money times 3: bingo!”
I dream of getting rich making sculls & shrouds …poor fool!
Whereupon the Panasonic cell phone the size of a modern-day cordless phone rings, complete with handset and mobile base: on the phone is a customer who tells me if I feel like going aboard the 3 mast.
Of course I say yes!
Novello Scrooge I think of the money.
Once on our client’s dinghy (I find out that he is indentured to the owner of the “multi-masted thingy”) we point out the harbor mouth and begin to catch a glimpse of the transom: Puritan it says…a schooner designed by John Alden and built way back in 1929 in the USA.
We are talking about almost 40 meters of sailing ship not just any yacht nor for “any-anyone”: Arturo Ferruzzi, one of Serafino Ferruzzi’s four sons.
Serafino big shoes and fine brains moved always under the banner of the greatest understatement was one of the most important traders in the world ceralìc market: on his appearance at the Chicago stock exchange-goods would sound his sirens!
Given time at the tender’s selvedge – it looked like Fantozzi’s compared to Puritan’s monumentality – we board and are escorted downstairs to the dinette.

The Moro adventure is born

So I find myself back in my hometown, Passignano sul Trasimeno, more or less mid-1980s at SAI AMBROSINI, a glorious aeronautical company founded by a very Milanese engineer precisely Angelo Ambrosini, but with “sailing” penchant, he made in 1973 the proto of the Brigand 36′ in aluminum (he would end up making Azzurra no less!).
There they are building Il Moro di Venezia, a maxi signed Frers and tremendously fractional whose tremendous loads literally made the winches of the steering wheels on deck “plow”.
The tails of the flywheels were pythons, anancondas, made of a killer metal/textile cable mix and the vang was with immense semi-circular rails on deck America’s Cup 12-meter style, or Star for short.
Of this beast, one remembers the resounding victory at the Maxi Worlds and King Raul of Ravenna donates a Rolex Submarine to each of the 28 crew members, other than expense reimbursement!

Those of the Moor at the Fastnet

The Moor is very fast: he wins the Channel Race and participates in the dreadful and funereal 1979 Fastnet: almost two dozen dead, dozens and dozens of boats left adrift but he escapes well thanks to his size, the preparation of the crew that even then despite the fact that such big boats could be counted on the fingers of one hand – read general experience of the équipiers not very high – and the fact that when the weather front broke out the biggest and fastest yachts were hit on the slack after turning the damned cliff overhung by the equally damned Fastnet lighthouse (I who turned it in 1983 in “almost Mediterranean” weather still scares me).
In the crew we already find “belli & navigated” the likes of Lorenzo Loik and Gian Luca Nanni Costa at the bow; Tilli Antonelli – eternal cigar in his mouth – who will soon say goodbye to sailing with the classic “it was nice” to devote himself with enormous success to motor boating; Jeremy Barbuto, the only Englishman in the world who speaks Italian to act as navigator together with the wiry Francesco Longanesi Cattani – better known as Pimperle, with affectionately “proletarian” manners although he was an aristocrat! and in fact became aide-de-camp to Prince Rainier in Monaco as well as P.R.’s Prada Man in a Bertellian Cup – just back then from the sinking of Falck’s Guia in the middle of the Atlantic!
Also in the coven was Arturo Ferruzzi, yes, the very one from the Puritan but who wisely stayed away from the Fastnet.

Angelo, the perfect sailor

Of that Wild Bunch lent to sailing – I will wrong some – the leading, prominent figure was Angelo Vianello, the Sailor with a capital “emme.
Of him Raul said in his seminal “My Way,” “learning I learned from many people […] from Angelo Vianello, my sailor, a character who knows the things of life and knows how to speak simple truths, but also very intelligent.”
And again, “A man too intelligent, of great soul and great common sense for the work he did. A man who could have done everything successfully if he had had different natures,” according to Gian Luca Nanni Costa.
Angelo had read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (Hugo pronounced it accented on the u) and was proud to tell you so, but he immediately confided-honored!
– that “Sor Raul” had lent it to him.

Mainemo, musi de mona!

Angelo sleeps, part of the transfer crew on deck, in the stern, with that 450-square-foot spi apartment, thanks to increasing wind and wave, gò-gò glides, the rudder in turn, calling out the knots of speed loudly.
Eight!
Nine!
One of them shouts, in rapid sequence Ten!
Eleven! etc. Angelo appears in a rush from below and snatches the rudder from those holding it, shouting, “Mainemo, musi da mona!”
They lower, all disappointed, the apartment.
However, in ten minutes, ten in number, they find themselves already with three-handed mainsail and small jib, jib-top #4 on shore, incredulous.
A storm of water, sea and wind!
Wisdom all in one man!
Arrival in Cowes, July 1979.
The Moor had just peeped into the Solent that here was Carlo Ferruzzi, the nautical photographer with ambitions of becoming the Carlo Borlenghi of the situation, as well as a relative of the family, coming to the reception in his offshore speedboat/racer.
Cowes, it is known, is not that amiable and fun as Saint Tropez.

The court of miracles

The Past is Past let us leave it alone then.
It hangs over us like a boulder though, like an asteroid that we do not see but feel its magnetic pull.
The Present is here and now.
Gone are the days of the white hand of Brookes & Gatehouse analog instruments now going big (?) with tablets.
From these monitors we see darting around like so many Willy Coyote “Flying Flies” that some call “boats” and occasionally crash hard as any Willy Coyote of rank does, into a Sail Time designed by the men of Startrek.
Meanwhile, Ivan Gardini, Raul’s son, brought to his stable the Naif, a jewel out of the pencil of Dick Carter, who also raced the Admiral’s Cup, an evolution of another Carter design, that Orca 43’which saw the debut in shipbuilding (under the name of C.N. Sailboard) of the Grand Old Man of production boats, that Giuseppe Giuliani, none other than Mister Cantiere del Pardo for decades as well as a relative of the Ferruzzi family.

Raul Gardini’s students

Bizarre life…
Prospicent to Gatti’s offices was the eagle’s nest, that Gianni Varasi, also long since departed, to the world of most, owner of that maxi Longobarda–again a creature of the Umbrian SAI AMBROSINI–by Bruce Farr who dared to slap the Moor III soundly!
The pupil, Varasi, who became better than the master.
That Varasi with that exquisitely self-made man dad who went from head-warehousekeeper of Meyer Paints to owner of it (the famous Max Meyer paints) always in battle with his progressive son, great 8 friend of Giorgio Bocca, but above all ally of Raul’s moment when it came to think “three meters above the sky” climbing Montedison with all that ensued later.

Respect for tradition

Stories from other times.
A very few years ago some people swore and perjured that they caught a glimpse of Carlo Sama, Raul’s close relative, helming a Wally but maybe it was just a B-movie, the fact remains that the Passion of Sailing infused by King Raul of Ravenna will remain indelibly in our eyes and a little in our hearts as well.
As the Art Ensemble of Chicago (not exactly those from the Chicago Commodity Exchange!), an angry free-jazz group, used to say, “Ancient to the Future,” roughly speaking, “There is no Future without respect for Tradition.”
How can you blame them? Free adaptation of a true story by Danilo Fabbroni