1975. Interview with Giulio Cesare Carcano

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

My name is Julius Caesar motorcycle project, but I would like to make boats

Taken from the 1975 Journal of Sailing, Year 1, No. 2, August, pp. 31.

Carcano from his home on Lake Maggiore could see the boats while working at Moto Guzzi. A poor but passionate sailor, one day he decided that after winning with his motorcycles, he would also win with his strange boats. So it was.

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Giulio Cesare Carcano, the engineer, lives in Mandello Lario. In the sailing world Carcano is well known, and his real fame as an engineer was made right here in Mandello Lario, when, as technical director of Moto Guzzi in its heyday, he designed and built the world champion motorcycles. Carcano has long since given up motorsports: yet he has certainly not lacked job offers, especially from Japan and the United States. Those who pay a visit to this youthful 60-plus-year-old discover him always immersed in calculations and drawings. No longer, however, for noisy engines, but for sailboat design. Definitely a leap, we would even say a qualitative one, quite sharp, and one that has its roots in Carcano ‘s passion for sailing since, as a boy in short pants, he would go to the lake, precisely to Mandello, and practically spend his days on a 12-foot dinghy. As an adult he continued in sailing by participating in local regattas, but without much competitive effort. After the war he had a Star, with which he did many regattas, from which the management of the Guzzi racing department diverted him in ’49. Only in ’58, after Guzzi, Gilera and Mondial had jointly decided to stop racing, did Carcano get back into sailing by buying the Violetta, the last 6-meter SI built in Italy: she was from Baglietto. It was around that time that Carcano began to design boats. It is from this memory that the interview that engineer Giulio Cesare Carcano gave to Giovanni Garassino for Il Giornale della Vela begins.

GdV: Engineer, when did you come to sailboat design?
CARCANO: The first boat I designed was a 5.50 SI, and the idea came about in 1959 in a somewhat curious way. Since we at Guzzi had used in racing motorcycles, and I would say very successfully, heavy alloys, that is, which had a higher specific gravity than lead, as crankshaft counterweights and for other things, I had the idea of making a boat that had the fin made of sintered tungsten-based material.

GdV: What does sintered material mean?
CARCANO: It is. said in the simplest possible way, a manufacturing process in which metal powders are used to obtain products with peculiar characteristics: for example, compact mechanical parts that are very strong and relatively easy to build. When the construction of the boat was already under way, I had the IVF ask the world federation if it was possible to use materials with a specific gravity greater than lead. The answer was no, and my “brilliant” idea fell apart. By this time, however, I was hooked on this boat, which I ended up of course doing with a traditional fin, and thus was born the first of the Volpina series, the boats with which I have had very good results. Of course if it hadn’t occurred to me to use that material, I probably would never have designed boats.

GdV: And when did it get to the offshore boats?
CARCANO: In 1960. I stopped working as a “biker” and then, as a retiree, I delved into the design of boats, no longer formula boats like the 5.50 but with the tonnage rules of that time, those of the RORC. The first boat I designed was the Vampa, which, according to the tonnage of that time, had a rating of 22 feet. Then, one thing led to another, and that’s how I got the label of boat designer…. A label that I like.

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GdV: You are the oldest of the Italian designers. And yet you design the youngest, most unconventional boats.
CARCANO: If I had to live on the income of a designer I would have to make traditional boats that look like Stephens, Nicholsons and so on. Instead, I am fortunate enough to be able to make boats the way I feel them. If a client comes to me, I have to tell him right away that the boat I will make will probably be uncomfortable, maybe even aesthetically ugly, and it is therefore difficult for me to ask such a brave person for even a robust fee. For that matter, it is all relative: even with regard to aesthetics, where, too, there is an established tradition. Remember when the Aprilia came out, with its unusual lines? Everyone was shocked and only after a few years were they able to appreciate its true beauty. Basically, my concept is this: those who copy always come later. And I was very pleased that the Vihuela, a very anti-traditional boat, brilliantly earned the qualification for the Admiral.

GdV: Undoubtedly the Vihuela is a boat that goes very fast. But it is also a general impression that it is a ” difficult ” boat and gets the best results when she is at the helm.
CARCANO: The Vihuela is a boat that has to be tuned to perfection to perform at its best, but it is by no means a difficult boat. Let’s just say it’s a boat that less than others is forgiving of mistakes by the helmsman and crew. But it is a boat that is not very strenuous even in hard conditions, and I am sure that other helmsmen would know how to make it perform much better than I can. I would really like to have this boat of mine tried by guys like Straulino: their judgment would interest me.

GdV: Another accusation made against her is that she builds very light displacement boats, boats suitable for triangles and not for long and challenging races.
CARCANO: Of course if you think you are going to make a highly competitive boat for a short or triangle race you are not going to make a boat good for around the world racing. However, my boats are structurally very strong, even as equipment, and this has been amply demonstrated in these years of racing. Except for the breaking of a forestay in a Middle Sea Race and the breaking of a mast during a walk-around, an incident due to poor rigging, my boats have had no other major failures. Of course when a boat is light its rigging is also light: the balance of the ratio should always be saved. However, if you want to know, I am also accused of other things: for example, I happened to read that my boats, and the Vihuela in particular, only go strong with carrying gaits. Ridiculous. The strength of the Vihuela, as seen in Marseille and at the Porto Cervo selections, is precisely the upwind swell where it manages to tighten more than the others without losing speed. I will tell you that during the design process I am mostly concerned that a boat goes strong in “upwind.” If it then does well in the other gaits all the better. I am also accused of making boats with little sail. One characteristic of my designs is to make boats go well in a lot of wind. A wind boat, if it has a good crew and good sails, can defend itself; if not, it cannot do anything at all.

GdV: You, who by the way was supposed to design a possible Italian 12-meter for the America’s Cup, do you think this famous event benefits “normal” sailing?
CARCANO: The America’s Cup brings the same benefits to sailing that Ferrari formula 1 brings to regular cars: however, this does not mean that we should not have the utmost respect for the America’s Cup on the one hand and Ferrari on the other.

GdV: While in other fields of technology there is much advancement, does it not seem to you that in sailing the progress appears less?
CARCANO: That is partly true. But that’s because the problem is much more difficult than it may seem at first glance. Take, for example, the tank. It is a very useful tool, to which there is no denying its validity, but it is a double-edged sword and difficult to interpret. If we place in the tank the models of two 40-rated boats, for example that of the Vihuela and that of an enlarged Mandrake, we will have different results, but we will not know scientifically which of the two boats is the best, because the behavior of a boat must be referred to the sea, with all its immense variations, and to the wind it will encounter: an even more variable factor. In the tank, that is, you cannot recreate all those conditions that you can find at sea. It is not like in the wind tunnel, where you can recreate the vortex that a car, a motorcycle will encounter on the road.

GdV: What can you tell young sailors?
CARCANO: So many things… But I would start by noting that in Italy unfortunately there is a wrong mentality. If two sailors have a boat of the same class they should often go out together, try and try again sails, equipment and everything. That this system gives largely positive results I witnessed when I raced in the 5.50. One year I had the Volpina II and Volpina III here on the lake and spent my August vacation trying and trying again. I still have the notebooks here on which I jotted everything down. At the end of the month I went with theVolpina III, which was the best boat, to Santa Margherita for a regatta where I met the usual friends, Oberti, Croce, Reggio, Salata. I did six regattas and got six firsts, I assure you very easily, because the boat was really on point. In Italy, on the other hand, there is a habit of fine-tuning the boat in regattas, which is better than nothing, but it certainly does not provide the results that the trials I suggest give. Over here, if a sailor proposes to a friend about trials for two, the friend immediately thinks, “That one there is screwing me over, it certainly doesn’t go the way it should go, he’s doing it on purpose to make me think my boat is going faster and so on…. “.

GdV: A curiosity: why do the names of your boats all begin with “V” and end with “A”?
CARCANO: Nothing mysterious. Simply that when I made my first 5.50 I didn’t know what to call it. A couple of my friends had a daughter whom we affectionately called Volpina. It was this little girl who asked me to name the boat after her nickname. Since the name, after all, had brought good, I went ahead with this, which became a rule. This is the simple story of the Villanella, Veronica, Vanilla, Vihuela, Vanessa, Vibrissa, etc.

Interview by Giovanni Garassino

NDR – Giulio Cesare Carcano died Sept. 14, 2005, at the age of 94 at his home in Mandello Lario.

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