2014. Life and miracles of the Malingri dynasty

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.

Malingri dynasty, 700,000 miles by sea

Taken from the 2014 Journal of Sailing, Year 40, No. 02, March, pp. 76-83.

The most famous family in Italian sailing, the Malingri dynasty tells its story. Explorers before navigators, the Malingri’s have experienced sailing across the board, from Mediterranean cruises to the toughest ocean races, from boat building to charter and sailing school. But it all began on the Lambro River with pneumatic mats.

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Raise your hand if you are a sailor who has never heard Malingri‘s name. Or rather, of a Malingri. Because this is a great dynasty that has “colonized” the last 40 years of Italian sailing. And who better than they could win the TAG Heuer VELAFestival Grand Prix. The entire magazine would not be enough to recount the sailing exploits of the individual members of the “clan,” starting with the progenitors Doi, Franco and Amedeo: in the following pages we have focused on those of Franco and his sons Vittorio and Enrico (who, we enjoyed calculating, have at least 700,000 miles of sailing behind them). Stories linked by the quest for adventure. Explorers before sailors, the Malingri ‘s have lived and live sailing all around: from Mediterranean cruises to the toughest ocean races, from boat building to chartering and sailing school.

Early adventures

It all began on small pneumatic mats, with which Franco Malingri (born March 10, 1934), along with his brothers Doi and Amedeo, traveled down the Lambro River one night in 1948. “Why did I do it?” asks Franco, immediately answering, “For the sheer love of adventure.” That feat was followed by others, such as the descent of the Po River by canoe, from the Ticino River to Venice, or the ascent of the Nile (and one more descent, that of the Congo) aboard two Pirelli “Greyhound” speedboats, for a total of 6,000 miles, in 1958.

The “conversion” to sailing

Until then, it is not wrong to consider the Malingres “freshwater sailors.” Then Doi (who passed away in 2004) married Carla Notarbartolo di Sciara, who passed on his passion for sailing, while Franco ended up at the altar with Fausta: “We got married in 1960, then came the children. Vittorio the following year, Enrico in ’62 and Francesco in ’64. There were too many of us, I couldn’t take them all in a canoe so I bought an old, used twelve-meter sailboat. Initially we kept it in Santa Margherita, Liguria, the starting point for our small cruises.”

You learn very quickly

Imagine if an “Indiana Jones” like Franco is satisfied with Portofino and its surroundings. His son Enrico recounts, “The first year we sailed to the Tuscan Archipelago, the next we were in the Aeolian Islands, and the summer after that we were in Greece, which remains to this day our destination for boating vacations.” Franco is a quick learner: this is the late 1960s, and grinding out a few hundred miles, without instruments, with only the help of nautical charts and sextant, constitutes a feat. Before long he is also ready for teaching: “I remember one year – Franco is speaking – we gave sailing school to all our friends’ children.” Leaving for Greece, for the Malingri, means just that: leaving for Greece, never stopping except to refuel. “I was about six years old,” Enrico recalls. When my father took me with him on the boat transfer from Naples to Athens. Just he and I, because Vittorio and Francesco had measles. Throughout all those years, there was no Greek island we did not land on: a Malingri, on a cruise, never returns twice to the same place!” . Franco knows how to make himself respected on board, and he organizes sailing in shifts, both watch and galley (this is so he can sail at night): an approach that his sons inherit in toto and apply in turn. Vittorio for example, who now “frolics” around the oceans with his Ocean Experience offshore sailing school, devotes special importance to teaching shift management.

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The Mediterranean is not enough

Meanwhile, something happens that suggests to explorer Franco that the Mediterranean, while fascinating, is a big cage. His brother Doi in 1967 becomes the first sailor to cross the Atlantic on a cruising boat (he does so aboard the Arpège Chica Boba in the company of Paolo Mascheroni): Franco, together with his young sons, helps him prepare the boat at the Cantieri Mostes in Genoa, and on that occasion his irrepressible longing for the ocean manifests itself for the first time. A craving that he will satisfy on the first legendary Whitbread of 1973-74, when he is aboard the prototype Koala 50 CS&RB Busnelli (built by Nordcantieri to a design by Robert Clark, designer of the Gipsy Moth III in Chichester), for which he is also project manager. She will make the leg from Cape Town to Sydney along with Doi, who will instead complete the entire race.

Around the world family tour

“It was not yet finished Whitbread that I made an agreement with the shipyard to buy the boat,” Franco explains. The purpose is obvious: to give himself and his family a tour of the world. After all, miles in the Mediterranean the Malingri have traveled many, and the step beyond the Pillars of Hercules is almost obligatory. In 1977 Franco set off aboard the CS&RB with his wife and three children on the voyage of a lifetime. Thus Enrico: “Dad had decided to embark on this adventure three years earlier. In fact, at work (Franco was an engineer and manager, ed.) he had communicated three years in advance his intention to take a sabbatical, just as the French heads of families did, the only long-range cruisers at the time.” The family gives up its moorings with one goal: to go all the way. “Vittorio and I were in high school science, Francis even in middle school. We arrived in June with three subjects to remediate in September. My father thought about it, didn’t care, and we left anyway. Our journey lasted twenty months: we missed two years of school, remediating as private students with the three-year-in-one formula.”

The sea as a school of life

Over the course of the round-the-world trip on the CS&RB, the crew consisted of family members, joined by friends and relatives from time to time. At least 25-30 people took turns on board the boat. Again, we sailed according to the dictates of Captain Franco: rigorous shifts (he even instituted a prize for the watch pair that would grind out the most miles, sparking competition between brothers) and long stretches without stopping. “We left Santa Margherita directly for Gibraltar,” says Enrico. with no stopovers in between. From there we aimed for the Canary Islands, where we stopped on one island, to hunt for (If you want meat in the boat you have to get it, this is the Malingri philosophy). So we directed the bow toward Saint Lucia, where Uncle Doi was on business. We had set sail from Liguria in June, and a month later we were in the Caribbean.” .

En route to the Pacific

Franco, Fausta, Vittorio, Enrico and Francesco do not stay long in the Caribbean seas. They stay a while in the Grenadines, then Los Roques Islands (a coral archipelago in Venezuela), Curacao, and the San Blas. “I wanted the Pacific,” Francoexplains: past the Panama Canal, they head to the Las Perlas Islands, then the Cocos, the Galapagos until they reach the Marquesas in French Polynesia. The voyage continues to the Tuamotu, Tahiti, and other Society Islands. All the way to Fiji. “We have been wandering around the Pacific for a year, with no set destination,” declares Enrico.

“I leave you alone in Bali.”

“When we arrived in Fiji, Mom went home. We were the only ones left with Dad. We made the crossing to Darwin, Australia, where Francis left us because he had to go to take his eighth grade exam in Milan. Father also had to return because his presence was required in the USSR where he was overseeing the construction of some mold-cutting machinery he had designed.” But instead of arranging for the family to return to Italy, Franco left Vittorio (17) and Enrico (15) alone on board in Bali. They are joined by a Swedish publisher friend of their uncle and his very cute daughters. With them they make the crossing to the Seychelles (3,400 miles) with a week spent in the midst of a tropical storm with 30 knots. “In the Seychelles we were joined by our father, with him we headed to Suez, passing through Aden, Yemen.”

The most difficult moment

“At the entrance to the Gulf of Suez,” Henry continued. there is a passage of about 20 miles bounded by two coral reefs. There are only 5-6 good miles to sail inland. Moral of the story: we had to do it at night, in 30 knots of air, upwind, exhausted after three days of bow wind in the Red Sea. In total darkness, among the ships passing by and turning every quarter of an hour. We would have liked to rest for a while at anchor in the bay of Sokotra Island before venturing into the passage, but the Egyptian military informed us, with a few gunshots, that we could not stay at anchor. Instead of waiting at the hood, we decided to go. My father stood at the chart and, log in hand, calculated the course to be followed in real time. A memorable night.”. After Suez comes the return to the Mediterranean and the return to everyday life.

Malingri boat builders

What’s next? Franco relies on “headhunters” to find work, deciding to set up his own business. Enrico and Vittorio return to school, the former goes to work, the latter enrolls in college but drops out after six months. He joins his father, who has since discovered himself as a nautical designer. “A friend bought the shell of a Sciomachen boat,” Franco recounts. And asked me to set it up. I decided then that I wanted to design boats; being an engineer I had all the means. I taught the craft to Vittorio as well.” . 1982 saw the birth of the first Moana 45 (Moana, in Polynesian, means “blue of the deep sea”), designed by Malingri in a Pesaro shipyard (later moved to Fano). A devouring sailor’s boat for devouring sailors. This would be followed by the Moana 39 in 1983, the Moana 33 in 1984 (one built by Vittorio, the other by Enrico, who has since become infected by the family craze), the Moana 30, and the Moana 60 with which Vittorio (who had built it himself) would participate in the 1992 Vendée Globe.

To Cuba for a new adventure

Of course, being cooped up in a boatyard building boats after a while tires the Malingri: the opportunity for a new adventure comes in the form of Cuban entrepreneurs who want to open a resort in Cayo Largo while developing the sailing business there. They meet Vittorio at the Boat Show (where he is exhibiting the Moana 33) and decide he is the right person. Thus was born an ante litteram sail-tourism business in Cuba, run by Vittorio and Franco with the help of Enrico and Francesco: the four of them bring the CS&RB, the Moana 39 and two “pirogons,” multihulls made by Franco to cope with the shallow waters of the reef to the island. The activity will go on for four years. Meanwhile, Vittorio‘s childhood friend Giovanni Soldini travels to Cuba to work with him and falls permanently in love with ocean sailing. From there the Soldini-Malingri human and sporting partnership will be born.

Regattas and the association with Soldini

Says Enrico well, “The Malingri family has two souls: one more cruising, embodied by me, my brother Francesco and my cousins, the other devoted to competitive racing. That of Uncle Doi, Franco and Vittorio.” Franco participated in three Ostars (two of them he did “against” Vittorio, the one in 1992 and 1996, because in the 1988 one his son had failed to start, beached in the transfer to Plymouth), Vittorio, probably the most famous of the Malingri racers, in 1992 was the first Italian to take part in the Vendée Globe (he would retire due to damage to the rudder), in 1996 he came third in the Ostar (in that edition Franco would appear aboard the trimaran Star Trek, which would break down forcing him to retire), and in the same year he won the Rome for Two together with Enrico. From 1998 onward, an endless amount of sailing and transoceanic: solo, double, crewed, with lifelong friend Giovanni Soldini. “He must have done at least 500,000 miles,” speculates Enrico, who affectionately calls him “the trucker of the seas.” In December 2005 together with Soldini he capsizes with the trimaran Tim during the Transat Jacques Vabre: it’s a hard blow for him, but he will get back on his feet by setting the record on the Dakar-Guadalupa route (from Senegal to the Lesser Antilles), 2,545 miles sailed solo aboard the 20-foot Royal Oak catamaran, uninhabitable and self-built.

Sailing schools

Vittorio now runs the aforementioned Ocean Experience offshore sailing school, while Enrico founded RAK Sailing Academy in Al Hamra Marina in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. A sailing school that aims to develop the sport in the Persian Gulf, targeting locals and the many foreign residents, while offering European sailors the opportunity to sail during the winter season.

by Eugenio Ruocco

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