2011. The turbulent life of Moya, a 100-year-old respectable boat.

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.

Moya, the boat that lived a hundred years

Taken from the 2011 Journal of Sailing, Year 37, No. 03, April, pp. 86-91.

History, logbook, reflections on Moya, a boat that lived 100 years and wants to become immortal in Paolo Rumiz’s account. She has changed sail rigs three times and twelve owners, raced at the legendary Fastnet, risked sinking…

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A logbook one hundred years long and hundreds of thousands of miles under the keel. The wonderful story of the never-ending life of a magical boat, inspiring reflections on going to sea and helping to live better.

Lloyds register number: 114918, year of construction 1910; William Crossfield shipyard in Arnside, England; name Moya; material wood; cutter rig; Rigby sails of Fleetwood; overall length 42.5 feet (m. 12.95); waterline length 35 feet (10.67 m); max. beam 11.6 feet (3.54 m); weight 12.34 tons; draft 6.5 feet (1.98 m); designer William Crossfield; engine none; owner A. E. Penny member of the Royal Mersey Yacht Club; fitting-out port Preston. Thus reads the first record of Moya, taken from the Lloyd Register of Yachts. Since then Moya has had a restless and turbulent life that only since 2002, when she was purchased by Gaetano Terrin of the Yacht Club Adriatico, has had some peace and stability. But there is one thing that all sailors will appreciate, knowing full well that she carries well, she has never changed her name. For the rest Moya has been through a lot: she has been through twelve owners, ten British, including the legendary horror movie author John Moxey who owned her from 1960 to 1969, and two Italians. Speaking of engines, for 14 years propulsion was represented by a four-meter oar, then the first inboard engine was fitted in 1924 (4-cylinder gasoline engine by Bergius of Glasgow), the second in 1961 (Morris gasoline 20 hp), and third and last in 1969 (Perkins 4-cylinder 47 hp). Also bizarre is the history of sailing arms, it went from cutter to yawl in 1927, returning to its origin in 1948. Chapter racing, the heyday was at the Fastnet (over 600 miles) in 1975, but she also took part in three Rimini-Corfu-Rimini (110 miles). He has sailed in seas all over Europe, but has never crossed theAtlantic. But there is still time to fill this gap.

It almost died after 100 years of life. But a boat can live longer than a human being. Passion and love can give it new life again, indefinitely. Can it become immortal? To read the story of Moya, a 13-meter cutter born in England in 1910 and newly refurbished one hundred years later, the answer is affirmative, yes, a boat can live indefinitely. This feeling of immortality was conveyed to us by the book “The Sign of the Wave. Moya 2010-1910” (Comunicarte edizioni) written by Piero Tassinari and Paolo Rumiz and beautifully illustrated with images and photographs from all eras collected through the work of her twelfth and last owner, Gaetano Terrin. We read the book and highlighted the passages that struck us most about this wonderful sea story. A logbook one hundred years long and hundreds of thousands of miles under the keel, throughout the seas of Europe. We offer them to you.

Mediterranean vs. Atlantic

Humans and societies change, but not nature. The shape of a boat is modeled on the shapes of the waves and the strength of the wind, which do not change over the course of a century. Navigation takes the same factors into account, and what is lost in complexity by moving from theAtlantic to the Mediterranean, where the rhythm is marked by the sun (= wind) and not the moon (= tides), is gained in terms of historical poignancy and complexity of human relationships. These, too, do not change profoundly over the course of a hundred years, and the words that resonate in the cockpit or the thoughts that pass through the mind as, under sail, one attempts to catch sleep in the berth, are in many ways the same in 1910 as in 2010. This is, after all, one of the reasons why people go boating for pleasure.

The engine and the camorrist

When Moya was launched she had no engine. A four-meter oar performed the task admirably. Early twentieth-century photographs show them to us like this, nobbies taking moorings at the top of the tide in Morecambe Bay, in a sea as smooth as a summer morning in the Mediterranean. Yet in the Mediterranean it is harder now. Hard to slip quietly past the fiberglass boats with tables set in the cockpit. But we know it anyway: we have a mission, and they are just poor people…. The next evening in Paxi a Neapolitan camorrist washes himself with bubble bath on the platform of a black speedboat massaging his testicles in front of the town square. He starts the engine to charge the batteries, cheerfully gassing families from nearby boats in the cockpit with children for dinner. It is time to set off again.

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Without a bow Moya is a dead chop

The prawners of Morecambe Bay, the type of boats to which also belongs Moya, have a tendency to lower the stern, of reduced volumes, when sailing in a slack wind. The sections of the live-work change, the behavior becomes erratic, partly because of the disproportion of the sail plan, and the helmsman’s effort increases. The jib must be kept hoisted even in a very stiff wind and, perhaps edged in the middle, helps keep the boat on course. A prawner without a jib is a dead prawner.

In the belly of the boat

The surprise was the interior. It was a warm and comfortable shell, the belly of a mythological fish like Pinocchio ‘s whale, and at the same time a sound box that transformed the noises of the outside world-sea, wind, human voices-amalgamating them and transforming them into something soft and decidedly symphonic. I thought of the chest of a cyclops, but also of a double bass. A perfect alcove, totally free of claustrophobic effects. A magnificent place to write, think, sleep, cut ties with the world. For this magnificent interior, more than for that keel or that sail, I bought the last provisions and arranged my things on board with particular pleasure. Then I went inside, happy as a mouse in cheese.

A beloved boat is a boat that laughs

It was there, that Piero, the skipper, also to keep himself awake, began to tell the story of Moya and revealed to us that some forty years earlier its umpteenth English owner, film director John Llewellyn Moxey, a well-known horror film author, ‘heard his boat laughing’ while alone in the cockpit on a moonless night. He added, “I believe it, because this is a happy boat, a boat that has been loved.” The cellist Mario Brunello had told me the same thing about lutes: “you can hear very well when they have been used with passion and skill. Unloved wood suffers.” So, it was absolutely the same thing, and old Moxey, who went on board there to get drunk with Anthony Quinn and a few actresses in the mood for revelry, was by no means a visionary.

The boat is the ideal den for children

Moya has always been loved by children. No child would prefer a modern boat to her. And there have always been many on board. In 2004, on a 1,500-mile cruise there are a three-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl on board. You don’t even need a crib, just wedge some pillows on the dunnage in the forward cabin so they don’t fall off. Noodles and cous-cous going to clog the cockpit scuppers. Don’t tell us about uniformed crews….

The day Moya became immortal

Dialogue on board during the Barcolana:
“Something needs to be done, next year is the centennial…”
“We could do a book…”
“Restoration needs to be done, more than books… The hull is tired. It is a generous boat, it has given more than anyone could humanly expect. But 100 years is a long time. The studding needs to be strengthened, the mast casing needs to be replaced, some of the horns, the pins, even the starboard bow…”
“We could sink her…”
“A glorious end. For such a boat…”
“If a boat is good to be coated, then it’s good to be repaired…”
The wind strengthens, toppling Moya over the side with all the weight of a sumo wrestler. White ridges everywhere, the gunwale underwater. Seven knots, fifteen tons galloping behind a four-meter bowsprit, mainsail topsail foresail and headsail.
“Go for restoration.”
“And go for the book.”

by Piero Tassinari and Paolo Rumiz

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