Farewell Silvano Botti, pioneer of Italian sailing and friend of GdV

Gone is Silvano Botti, 77, one of the “greats” of Italian boating and sailing. A true pioneer, sailor, entrepreneur, adventurer, visionary. Raise your hand if you have not met Silvano once in Liguria where he was born in Spezia, or in his beloved Milan, where he had lived for decades. He was always the first to sniff out, intercepting new trends, the evolution of boating.

Here you can find the last tribute we at the Sailing Newspaper gave him in June.

Silvano Botti a visionary in an ordinary world

A special man Silvano Botti who understood before others what people wanted.

Italians fall in love with oceanic feats? And he crosses the Atlantic in 1984 with a Show 42 in the Brooklin Cup race that is run by two, one man and one woman.

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In the early 1990s, he intercepted the emerging trend of sailboat charters and founded a charter company, the first in Italy.

Italians discover the joy of boat ownership? And he snags the world’s best shipyards, Dehler and Dufour.

Sailing becomes easy thanks to rollers, and he imports the best models.

There is a niche of sea lovers who love beautiful, high-performance sailing objects. He intercepts it and imports the Saffier.

In 2000 the “catamaran mania” explodes? Silvano starts a company that deals only with multihulls.

Of boats he understood like few, you mentioned a problem to him over the phone and he knew how to solve it. Until the end, which happened abruptly and unexpectedly, he thought about the future, imagining new activities, as if it were the first day of work.

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One of his most sincere friends and sodalists, driven by a common innovative spirit, was Salvatore Serio, who bought the Dufour shipyard in 2008 for which Botti was one of the main dealers.

At the Cannes Salon Botti and Serio formed a formidable pair, revered by all, operators and audience alike.

Serio remembers Silvano with a tasty episode : “I used to call him Bottinho, in the Brazilian way. He reminded me of the brilliant Brazilian soccer players, imaginative and visionary. He always found a solution. Like in 2013 when aboard a brand-new Dufour 40, which was to participate in the ORC World Championship in Ancona, we stay in the middle of the sea without gasoline in becalmed waters. We are miles and miles from the coast. I get nervous and decide to go below deck to sleep. We’re going to spend the night lounging in the middle of the sea anyway, I think. The sound of an engine wakes me up, but it is not ours. It is that of the outboard of a dinghy that Silvano, who knew everyone and everyone respected, had called to the rescue with a providential can of fuel.”

This was Silvano, a factual, concrete, brilliant, reliable man.

The entire Sailing Newspaper, which has known and esteemed him since way back in 1975, is close to his wife Claudia, his life and work partner, and daughter Sara at this sad time.

Good wind Silvano.