Carlo Cameli: “Me, the Giraglia, the Club.” Interview with the president of the Italian Yacht Club

INTERVIEW. Carlo Cameli, president of the Italian Yacht Club, talks about his life of boats. and sailing. From his first Giraglia in 1966 when his cousins embarked him on EA to steering Italy’s oldest club, which he runs like a ship

Interview with Carlo Cameli, YCI president

Carlo Cameli of Genoa, 73, presidentof the Yacht Club Italiano, Italy’s oldest sailing club founded in 1879, has the sea in his blood. His family since the late 1800s has lived and worked with boundless passion for boats and the sea. At the “Club,” as they call it in Genoa, he first set foot in the baby carriage and has been a member for 60 years. At the Giraglia, the most famous regatta in the Mediterranean, he first participated in 1966 on his cousins’ boat, the famous Ea.

It was written that sooner or later he would become president of the Italian Yacht Club. So it was, in 2023.

Every day since then he has entered the historic building overlooking the Duca degli Abruzzi Marina.

leggi anche

Winning a world championship in your own land is a crazy thrill. Right Magdalena?

More than as president, he governs the Club as a shipowner, his lifelong profession. The ship is the Club, the crew the hundreds of people who work on it and frequent it.

We meet him on the command deck, the beautiful wood-paneled library. he has just stepped off the pilot boat “Beppe Croce,” as elegant and historic as this ancient Club, where he headed the committee in a regatta. He takes off his oilskin, we begin.

At the Italian Yacht Club to come and eat in the evening does one still need a tie?

Yes, during the week. Weekends no. Pants and shirt are fine, flip-flops and shorts are not. One must come to terms with changing times, tradition must be married to modernity. Keeping a balance between members who are 90 years old and those – thankfully many – 13/14 years old. Not forgetting the 30-year-olds. The important thing is that members attend the Club, regardless of age.

The club as a ship?

Of course, I have managed ships and men, and the comparison is perfect. The captain must always have the door open, dialogue with the crew and guests. The ship is the clubhouse. Outside, the sea. The Italian Yacht Club is a beautiful, well-maintained classic boat that is constantly renewing itself.

Club member since 1965…

Prehistory…in fact, my daughters call me Flintstone (after the cavemen in the famous Hanna & Barbera cartoon, ed.). I became a partner, encouraged but not forced, by setting foot aboard a Flying Junior drift boat. My first love was a beautiful wood-colored Galetti ITA 1501, a Stradivarius that walked as well. Some accomplishments we made.

First time sailing?

My parents put me on a Dinghy in Paraggi Bay (Gulf of Tigullio, ed.) and said, go! I didn’t end up on the rocks and realized that I liked sailing.

leggi anche

Monotype gathering more than 70 boats at the Worlds after 30 years

The first Giraglia?

1966. My cousins, out of pity, boarded me on my uncle Filippo’s boat, the EA. A jewel, built by Baglietto. Designed to win in real time, long, narrow, beautiful. EA in 1953 had won the Blue Ribbon (record for crossing the Atlantic, ed.).

Then what?

Work took me away from Genoa. Since 1986 I left Genoa, for three years I was in Ravenna and then 32 years in Rome. But sailing I did not abandon it. Many fun years on the J 24 in the early 1980s with Bobi Bianchi and Fabio Risso. Regattas in the Adriatic on Trombini’s beautiful Garibaldi against people like Cino Ricci.

A long period without setting foot in the Club?

No, with my little girls we used to come on Sundays eat here as soon as I could. And the YCI pennant has always been on my boats. Like in the period since 2000 when I got on the Dinghies. I had three of them, I went around Italy far and wide with the boat attached to the trolley sleeping even where it happened. Once I fell asleep on the dock of Lake Bracciano at two in the morning. Good sports results, I was deputy class secretary. I like to remember that my first Dinghy was one of the Umbertas, the boats of the Croce family that made sailing and YCI history.

Your sailing place of the heart?

From Rapallo to Punta Chiappa, passing through Portofino where I know every little rock, shoal, the good edge depending on the wind. As kids we used to start from the diving board in the bay of Paraggi where now you can’t go anymore. With a megaphone our sailor (the famous “Rube”) would give the start by shouting PUM! It was a playful, fun sailing that has been missing today. it is a spirit that I would like to bring back at least a little to the Club.

The Giraglia regatta still has some of this spirit, or does it?

For me the motto of the Giraglia is: to be a true sailor you must have done the Giraglia once. To understand, if you are an Englishman you must have done the Fastnet race (Isle of Wight in the English Channel – Fastnet rock in Ireland – Plymouth, total 608 miles). The Giraglia (Saint Tropez – Giraglia rock in Corsica – Genoa), which the Anglo-Saxons call The Fastnet of the Sun, is shorter, 240 miles. It always gets everything, though: bonanza, breeze, calm and rough seas. An unpredictable regatta where anyone, with luck, Can achieve an unhoped-for result.

Is that why with your current cruising boat, the beautiful Hallberg Rassy 45 Blue Indy, you participated in the Giraglia post Covid?

It all started at the dinner table with three or four friends. If the Gianin VI (a 1976 Halberg-Rassy 41, ed.) won in 2015 in compensated time, why couldn’t we do it too with the very heavy HR 45? So we did it merrily, not missing a thing, loaded with wine, gin, plenty of food. it was a Giraglia with very little wind, certainly not suitable for a Nordic boat with little canvas weighing 20 tons. We sailed becalmed bowed davanbti to the finish here in Genoa. We would have finished fourth on corrected time but we came in over the top. Crazy anger, but indelible memories.

Which Loro Piana Giraglia is the one in 2025?

Beautiful. The new formula with four days of racing in the Saint Tropez Gulf (June 7/10) with the return to port with guaranteed berth with registration. Every afternoon upon return to the village on the main pier of Saint Tropez the day’s awards ceremony with open bar until 8 p.m. open to all crews. The whole town is celebrating and living this event with hundreds of sailors animating it. A ‘unique atmosphere, waiting for the Loro Piana Giraglia proper, on the high seas (departure June 11).

The “long” Giraglia, born in 1953 with twenty-two boats at the start, has been able to continuously renew itself in its 72 years of existence. At least 170 boats are at the start, not only from Italy and France, but from all over the world. More and more the hundreds of sailors who animate it are pampered, not just the owners.

Every day we meet at the end of the day as it used to be for sailors at the harbor bar. In the end, everyone is a winner because everyone won…because winning means being there. And you’re proud to consider yourself a true Mediterranean sailor. And then, let’s face it, the “bang for the buck” can always happen. And in Genoa, at the long awards ceremony, maybe.

Luigi Magliari and Luca Oriani