25 August 2011 | Horta Azzorres
23 August 2011 | Between Terceira and Faial, Azzorres
22 August 2011 | Arriving in Terceira, Azzorres
Silver Surfer
25 August 2011
Nico
When you sail upwind enought heeled and u have a lot of space in front of you , u can use the spinnaker halyard to hang yourself over board ( with a rope to take u back on board ) and play Silver Surfer smashing on the waves. Very funny!!!!
Italian flag
25 August 2011 | Horta Azzorres
Vittorio
Hi
we are moored at the Horta Marina dock, the one with all the boats names and designs written on it, or y may say the original one, cause this habit has speraded in all the Azzorresì, Canaries, Madeira and lot more places.
As you sea from the immage, we bear a very small and battered italian flag.
In a way this it's because,from this march to now,we are near to 15.000 miles of navigation. From Fano, in the Adriatic Coast, to Genova, then to NY, then to the Azzorres, and the day after tomorrow we'll start the 5th voyage to Lisbon or back, each near the 1000 miles.
Looking to our present immage, while Nico is cleaning and reparing around, I had a couple of thoughts:
1) Our flag reflect our country situation: small and battered. I'ts a lot better that I do not comment that. I'm a sailor and my colorfull language could embarass some gentleman or lady reading this. Unfortunately there are no good words I can address to government, the opposition and to all the Italian citizens that permitted all this to happen in the last 15 years.
2)To me a blue water crusing boat is a vessel that, after each ocean passage, you just have to wash with a fresh water hose. Thats all.
If you have the rigth boat, and above all the right gear: sails, ropes, plants, ecc., it goes like this for years.
To achive this manteinance is the key........and I hear my son shouting at me to move my ass and start to work.
This is a world at the contrary!
Sorry.... I have to go.
It looks like just a sail..but there is a lot more in it
23 August 2011 | Between Terceira and Faial, Azzorres
Today is an upwind sailing, full main and mizzen, staysail and reefed genoa.
This genoa is one off the various sails I developed with my good friend Bob Pattison, chief designer at Neil Pryde Sails International in CT. It's a special reinforced type of genoa/yankee, that can be heavily reduced but still hold a very flat shape. It has reinforces, on clew and head, also in rolled position, in way resist days of hard work under storm condition.
Sail developmet has always been one of my favourite research, expecially for from the finishing and construction point.
With Bob we designed incredible sails.
Once I had a CL-P set, the heavy one for a vandee Globe. The plan was to start and arrive with a kevlar set and then, in the southern oceans, change all sails with the CL poliester set (I was low budget). I did it.
That poliester set, the same for a professional crusing boat, was already been used in one year training, during the same year OSTAR( singlehanded teransatlantic race), in the trip back to Italy.
During the Vandee Globe unfortunatly I brooke my rudder less than 2000 miles from Cape Horn, and I had to sail to Tahiti. The same set of sail then took me home, agaisnt the wind in the pacific and in the atlantic.
To raise found I was school sailing on my Open 60 boat for the nerxt to years, always with the same CL-P set. After 5 years and 40.000 miles I took part again in the Ostar it was 1996. I had new kevlar genoa and staysail but the main did not arrived in time for the start.
I had to race with the old main 6 years old and bearing more or less 50.000 miles.Mine was delivered for error in Polland by DHL.
I was in the head of all the fleet from the second day up to almost the finish of the race. At the end the poor Gerry Roufs took me and won. The same night in a slack of wind, there was another boat that passed me. That guy was from the area and knew how to sneak between the banks better than i did.
It amazing what can go through your brain while reefing a genoa between the azzorres arcipelago.
It looks like a sail......but there a lot more in it.
Thanks Bob, you always did great sails for me and for my clients.... and I thought about you a lot more than I showed.
We'll do a lot more in the future as I still feel a sixteen year old boy with a life of sailing in front of me.
Elmo's first post
22 August 2011 | Arriving in Terceira, Azzorres
Vittorio
Hi everybody, this is our first post.
We are Vittorio and Nico Malingri, father and son from Italy.
Our boat is an Ocean 71 ketch "Elmo's Fire" and we give blue water sailing courses, navigating the Atlantic Ocean and the Med.
My story at sea is long, lets say, for the moment that I left Italy when I was 16th, with my family, and I'm not still gone back.
Whe where around the world for two years, between 78 and 79, that changed defenitively may life.
I'm gone through boat delivery, yacht design and construction of our production blue waters crusing yachts Moanas, school sailing, Iplaced the first charter base in Cuba, 84', and then in the Bahamas. All the time single handed ocean racing, participating at the major events like Ostars, Quebec-St. Malo, Vendee Globe, Route du Cafe and many others on board my Imoca Open 60' and a couple multi ORMA 60' trimarans.
But there is a lot more.
At the moment we are arriving at Terceira island, in the Azzorres group, with a nice students crew.
I'm sorry but I have to go on deck and teach them how to moore a boat in a bay or a dock....I'm very happy to be part of this comunity.
see you later
Vittorio