Stories of the IOR: great boats and great sailors
THE PERFECT GIFT!
Give or treat yourself to a subscription to the print + digital Journal of Sailing and for only 69 euros a year you get the magazine at home plus read it on your PC, smartphone and tablet. With a sea of advantages.
Of IOR and great sailors
Speaking of the IOR and the great boats it was able to produce, it becomes inevitable not to also talk about the great figures who animated and populated it, giving it a life all its own that, whether by events, regattas or hulls, made so many dream.
On this front, to really bring to life this intention of ours to celebrate that period to the best of our ability, we have an ace up our sleeve: Danilo Fabbroni, a contributor to the Sailing Newspaper, sailor and rigger, as well as a writer (here you will find our recommendations on two great reads of his for the summer, including “Sailing is beautiful … too bad sailors do it!”).
And it is precisely to his words that, today, we leave you, to learn more about an exceptional period, a period made up of great people and excellent figures but, and above all, of sailors such as perhaps will never be seen again.
“Jepson,” the “Mr. IOR.”
Giorgio Falck, a member of the Italian Krupps, was certainly an atypical figure both in the sailing scene and in his home world: rather, it was his cousin Alberto who was the paron with the nice white breeches apiece every day in the steel mill.
Giorgio was more of a reveler of the sea.
A patron of the sea.
Few shipowners have given their boats in toto as he did to Luciano Làdavas and also to Pierre Sicouri.
Very few, moreover, have given tips as he did to Pierre, to direct his future as a commodities trader.
I remember him indelibly, crouching in the stern, helming, in that pose that to all could not help but look uncomfortable, smoking like a Turk, and pulling impossible edges. A la Falck. And aboard his boats, Jepson […] – the protagonist of this anecdote, ed.
So wrote Pierre Sicouri in March 1978 in the pages of the Giornale della Vela, in a letter addressed to Giorgio Falck, recounting the Whitbread leg from Auckland to Rio de Janeiro aboard B&B.
One day Guido confided in me a tranche de vie of the round-the-world race, the Whitbread on the Rolly Go, by Jepson that deserves not to pass into oblivion.
Sailing up the Patagonia, on a starry night with less sea but some air and the sail, genoa #3 on the bow, Guido aka Quite, is asked by Jepson in a philosophical/existential/astronomical duet reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics:
It’s Jupiter. Shortly after Jepson: Yes, but what star is it? Guido: I told you Jepson, it’s not a star it’s a planet. Always the indefatigable Jepson: What the fuck kind of star is it that wasn’t there yesterday? Guido: In fact it’s not a star, it’s a planet. Jepson: Yes, but what the fuck kind of star is it that moves? Guido: All right, Jepson, it’s a star that compared to the others is moving. And Jepson triumphant: Fedi Quite, you afefi told you it was na star!!! But at the world tour some really good things happened.
Jepson was literally terrified of icebergs.
Perhaps he had encountered one or more too close on some Guia.
We don’t know exactly, but it is a fact that he was scared to death (rightly so, too…).
So he would always go below to see from Guido the latest weather map transmitted by the Nagrafax, until he was exhausted.
Matteo Caglieris, an engineer, happens to be at the chart, in Guido’s absence, and he doesn’t even know why, but he scribbles in pen a couple of figurines on the Nagrafax map that vaguely resemble miniature icebergs.
So he gets up and goes back on deck.
As luck would have it, after a few seconds, here comes Jepson swooping down again for the umpteenth time with the intention of peeking at the map.
He had never done that!
When he sees that in the midst of the isobars of the weather map, in the semi-darkness of the charts, the unmistakable silhouettes of icebergs appear before his eyes, he jumps up on deck and begins to rail like a hydrophobic dog against Guido: Quite, I afefo told you that we were screwed by the sfaccimme-di-aisberghe!
[…]
He often came from Lavagna to Porto Cervo for races, alone and without papers, used to going by eye and instinct.
Not that he was a stickler, as they say, but he certainly was not one built or posed.
Bread to bread, wine to wine.
Like that time for theAdmiral Cup selections, in Punta Ala, which saw, to put it mildly, Guia with a bit of a size problem.
And so Jepson telephoned the engineer Falck, in the firm in Milan. 
We have to remember that these were the days of the first advanced telephone switchboards, and therefore, in firms of a certain importance, the first jingles were being experimented with to announce that the call was placed on hold.
Jepson, calling obviously from the pay phone (other than a smartphone) inside the little bar in Punta Ala packed with sailors, seethes and begins to rant like this: (down a series of unrepeatable dirty words today…) then again, louder and louder, (another series of even more awful swear words…) to make himself heard, he pronounces them as best he can sound them out!
Whereupon the young lady at the switchboard, though distracted by a thousand other calls makes, alarmed and scandalized: What did he say??! And Jepson: AH!
But then we have afete-le-recchie!!! But here Jepson is finally passed to Engineer Falck and shouts-not even alone in the crowded little bar-an unforgettable phrase: Incegnero … they’re onto us!
….
Incegnero they found us out! And everyone burst out laughing… From that day on, the motto “Incegnero ci hanno scoperto!” became the For whom the bell tolls! It stood for Jepson was in port! Jepson was like that, he loved the frontal perspective, he was not an “oblique.” You could either hate it or be fascinated by it.
On the other hand, so was his idol, the mythical, real Jepson, the Finnish guy who kicked in Italian teams like no one else!
This is how I knew Jepson: if I had the honor of pinning the medal for THE LORD IOR of all time on my chest I would pin it on the chest of the Henry Lloyd oilskin to GIOVANNI VERBINI, aka JEPSON, no one better than he embodied the Brancaleone Army spirit (in the best and worst of the definition) that was the IOR. by Danilo Fabbroni
- TELL US ABOUT YOUR IOR BOATS AND THEIR ANECDOTES! ENTERING A CLASSIC IOR INTO THE CLASSIC BOAT ARCHIVE IS SUPER EASY: CLICK HERE AND ENTER THE BOAT . ALWAYS HERE, ALSO FIND ALL YOUR CLASSIC BOATS ALREADY SURVEYED
- You might also be interested in:
Due libri giusti (e divertenti) di vela da portarvi in vacanza
Share:
Check out the latest issue
Are you already a subscriber?
Ultimi annunci
Our social
Sign up for our Newsletter
We give you a gift
Sailing, its stories, all boats, accessories. Sign up now for our free newsletter and receive the best news selected by the Sailing Newspaper editorial staff each week. Plus we give you one month of GdV digitally on PC, Tablet, Smartphone. Enter your email below, agree to the Privacy Policy and click the “sign me up” button. You will receive a code to activate your month of GdV for free!
You may also be interested in.
Guido Bernardinelli, “How We Won (Again) the World H-Boat”
Guido Bernardinelli (click here to learn more about Bernardelli’s sailing history) repeats himself and repeats his world success in the H-boat class after last year’s victory! The cup remains in Italy ITA 555, this is the sail number of the
Chieffi – Colaninno timeless: they are still Champions at the European Star
It is indeed true that certain loves never end, like that of Enrico Chieffi, CEO of Slam and before that manager of reference for Nautor Swan, for the Star class. In Marina di Carrara, in the very waters where with
USED CLASSIC BOAT | 5 “vintage” daysailers for all to enjoy
The panorama concerning the Classic Boats -that is, production boats over twenty-five years old and launched since 1967-. is a vast and ever-expanding context, composed of hulls of all shapes and sizes and, perhaps, not as easily “navigable” as
Giro d’Italia sailing resumes after a pulse-pounding third stage
On June 10, the Figaro 3 set off again for Brindisi for the fourth leg of the Giro d’Italia sailing race 2025. The descent of the Adriatic is proving to be very technical and compelling, and the competing crews are
