Classic Boat Cult | Polluce, the Navy’s Half Tonner rebirth

On the stern of all 223 sailboats of the Navy appears an inscription: S.V.M.M. It has been so for a good 90 years. In fact, it was 1935 when, by Ministerial Order Sheet, the Sport Velico Marina Militare, a legacy still alive today under what we know as MARIVELA, the Sailing Office of the Navy General Staff. What interests us in this article, however, is a single stern, a very specific one. That of a Half Tonner, the only one of 6 built to survive and race even today: Polluce (ITA 10511).

Classic Boat Cult | Polluce, the S.V.M.M. Half Tonner that keeps on racing

Built by De Cesari in glulam (West-System), Polluce is launched in 1986, latest in the HT-MM (Half Tonner Navy) series designed by the outstanding Studio Vallicelli &C. Extremely pulled, twin to the multi-titled Castor, Polluce was born for the Half Ton Cup and for the Italian Championship in Chioggia, and then continued racing under the S.V.M.M., also well beyond its own limits, entering fully on the IMS fields-for which it is optimized in the early 1990s. But, registry aside, what we are interested in happens in much more recent times, by the M. M. Sailing Section of Messina., which keeps this milestone of Italian sailing alive and competitive, guaranteeing its future and sending a positive signal to the entire world of Classic and IOR sailing.

Polluce: 39 years of activity and updates

Conceived and designed in the late 1990s under theInternational Offshore Rule, with the advent of the IMS (International Measurement System) Polluce became a hull prone to obsolescence. To save her, in that case as today, however, intervenes the will of Marivela who, appropriately, plans and executes an optimization upgrade, giving way to a succession of constant and targeted upgrades and maintenance. Starting in the late 1990s, under the careful management of the MM Section of Messina, the succession of various ordinary and extraordinary maintenance operations have enabled Polluce to remain always in full operational efficiency, becoming a cornerstone of the S.V.M.

In this light, the latest intervention of the conservation; a philological refit that, with a view to maintain historicity, restores new life to Polluce -so much so that, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the establishment of Marivela, Polluce itself represented the Navy at the 31st Italian Absolute Offshore Championship…

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Now fully refitted and in operation, Polluce underwent a major conservative rehabilitation following the emergence of a number of structural criticalities over the years. After a series of inspections by M.M.’s technical staff, it was decided to carry out consolidation work intended mainly for the anchorage system of the mainsails and rigging

Constructed of laminated wood and with a view to being an extremely lightweight and high-performance hull for a period of time that is however limited, Polluce was in fact born with in-line spreaders and direct-discharge shrouds on moorings bound by welding to a spider in stainless tubes that were not properly connected to the nearby structural bulkhead. Over the years, however, the rig’s stresses not uniformly transmitted to the lande-hull complex caused deformations that required restoration work capable of ensuring the necessary structural safety of the hull, restoring first and foremost, the original equilibrium .

With this in mind, Architect Matteo Zunino -already a military conscript at the MM Sailing Section of La Spezia- under the supervision of Navy personnel, drew up a project aimed at intervening mainly at the structural consolidation of rig support and, more generally, also toward the total trim of the hull -tended to be bowed (IOR chains)- returning the moorings-shaft complex to a position more congenial to its original and, thus, closer to the corresponding structural bulkhead. A choice that thus resulted in as many as two main advantages:

1) on the one hand, the intervention went to reduce the area of overlap between genoa and mainsail;
2) on the other -together with the overall displacement of the masses of mast, rigging and engine- the shift of the center of gravity towards the stern (by about 4 cm) resulted in an increase of the freeboard at the bow by about 3 cm restoring a buoyancy close to that of the original design (photo below).

A complex that, given the boat’s original vocation for expressing its best in ‘airy’ conditions, allowed the hull’s responsiveness to be enhanced in the target range, that between 4 and 12 knots.

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Interesting, on the restoration front, is the solution with which the defined geometry was implemented. In fact, with a view to restoring trim and structure to the original complex, a new stainless steel rib was designed and built to anchor the shrouds, connected to all the existing structures – bottom of the boat, structural bulkhead and original stainless steel spider – with the aim of making all the elements cooperate and reduce the stress peaks, as well as the consequent deformations, on the individual components. A flawless job, moreover, carried out and put in place with the in-house workers of the Messina Sailing Section

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