What it means to be a Sailor. The passing of Pinin Borghi

Gone at age 84 in his Chiavari, in the center of the Tigullio Gulf in Liguria, “Pinin” Borghi, one of the last great Italian sailors. We asked Danilo Fabbroni, one of his students, to remember him, and a fresco of last century’s sailing was born. A dying world where the knowledge of seamanship, sailing and racing was handed down from generation to generation. A chain of knowledge that is being broken. It was sailors like Pinin Borghi who taught the younger ones. These masters of sailing but also of life will be missed and risk interrupting the chain of “know-how” that has made our country an excellence in the world.

Pinin Borghi, great sailor

When in the age when short pants were still worn it happened that playing “wall” my playmates would bring down Panini stickers with the faces of Gigi Riva, Mazzola or Gianni Rivera I would pull out of my jacket pocket the stickers cut from the press of the time of Eric Tabarly, of Guia, of Ted Turner winner of the America’s Cup at the time, of Sagittario (a Sciarrelli) who made the O.S.T.A.R. (today’s Transatlantica), the Moratti’sEnteara , and on and on.

Never, ever, would I have dreamed that the Asters, dumb luck and having chosen two parents who had gone sailing would lead me decades later to be complimented by Turner, to sail on the Sagittarius but most of all to have the honor of knowing and hanging out – I freshwater sailor! – Outstanding Men, those I called “Historic Sailors” in the sense that they really made the History of our own sailing and many times not only that.

There were not even a dozen and there still are, fortunately. By bad luck we ring “8 times the bell,” as the Masters of Yachting, the British, say, for Pinin who from the Tyrrhenian shared the scepter with another “historian,” Angelo, an “Adriatic,” sailor of Raul Gardini. We see as smoke in the eyes, top charts, podiums, rankings so we do not make it a question of more or less great “skill” since all the dozen “historical sailors” stood on an equal plane of valor, but we make it a question of “heart,” in plain words of: generosity! Well Angelo and Pinin “weaned and raised” a harvest of people who would later become great sailors in their turn whose list would take away pages of this newspaper so vast is it.

But it is the way in which Angelo and Pinin “taught” that was unique, unmatched nowadays and it was the one under the banner of pure “gift”: they “gave” you lessons of true Maritime Art, capital letters, without demanding anything from you, rather with the Joy in the Heart of giving you, without any return we repeat, part of their real life! Here we go back to the beginning and “we are” on Enteara, when the Moratti’s armed this racing boat and who was on it but the great Pinin? When I heard about it I thought of the diatribe Panini stickers vs. Tabarly’s photo in my hands! Soccer & sailing!

When it was time to face the non-trivial S.O.R.C. regatta (with all the transfers of boat and spare parts attached and connected up and down Florida) it was decided to give me two supports not to be laughed at: Stefano Tobia and Pinin precisely! Without taking anything away from Stefano great sailor and person of enormous reliability to me it seemed to touch the sky with one finger to have a Master like Pinin by my side for more than a month (actually it was me who was not even up to the task of tying his shoes!). What to say. Pinin knew how to do anything and everything extremely well: from leather on the wheels of the rudder; to cooking like a god; to painting any surface; to splicing even the then nascent exotic fibers; and most of all to helming in bad weather strably, see the ascent from Key West to Fort Lauderdale in cursed Gulf current against the wind, a race moreover won by us in the Brava class.

I cannot erase the moment when one day on a boat in a race-off so we to work under the scorching sun of Nassau he confided to me almost half-heartedly that Pasquale Landolfi (owner of the legendary Brava) had questioned him about whether or not to embark me on the Brava since another great sailor-also Ligurian like Pinin-had shown thumbs-down but Pinin instead was decisive in getting me boarded (objective sources later confirmed the episode to me). Well, Pinin was all of this: a Generous Being who did things to help others without the prevailing mercantilism of today, it was this in addition to everything else that made him A Great One. This was the real difference between him and others. Eight Bells dear Pinin!

Danilo Fabbroni