Emanuele Rossi: the father speaks he ERYD

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Sailing, the great excellences of the sailing world tell their stories and reveal their projects. In this column, discover all the companies and people who have made important contributions to the multifaceted world of sailing, which enables us all to go to sea in all forms and contexts.

In this installment, we take you on a tour of the history and news of Emanuele Rossi, the Italian designer who loves to design boats “out of the box.”

A designer out of the chorus

Emanuele Rossi ‘s Eryd set trends and stood out, but it all began with a render in The Journal of Sailing.

There is an Italian designer who in his career has almost always designed boats “out of the chorus,” choosing a personal and refined style that also follows the logic of the market but before that aims to give his boats a very precise identity. We are talking about Emanuele Rossi, father of ERYDs, active on both the sailing and powerboat fronts. His boats can be recognized by aesthetic and technical choices that connote and distinguish them from the rest of the market. His story is also linked to the Sailing Newspaper, galeotto was in fact one of his renderings that was published in our magazine in the early 2000s, and gave the definitive launch to his career. “The passion for the sea goes back to when I was a child, I was fascinated by lancet fishing and experiencing the sea,” Emanuele tells us. “So my adventure started with powerboats, fishing boats, I liked Grand Banks, and it was also the glorious era of offshore powerboats. Initially I saw sailboats as something complicated,” he confesses to us. “The idea of the boat object has always fascinated me though, just on the level of the interaction between hull and water. I remember when I was 8 years old on a house boat vacation, spending hours towing a small toy catamaran, and I loved watching the wake of this little floating object,” he recalls going back to his childhood. “The electrocution for sailing came around the age of 12, on a Confortina 950, I took a trip with my father’s friend’s boat. It was an epiphany to see how the boat moved just with the wind. And from there it became almost an “obsessive” thing, on the school desk at 12 I was drawing boats and pissing off the janitors. I would ask to buy all the sailing magazines, Italian and otherwise, and to me it was enough to see the pulpit of a boat to know what boat it was.” . And soon came the first family sailing and racing.

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Emanuele Rossi ‘s first steps

“My father bought a First 38s5 and we won in 1992 the Giraglia class and overall, I was 16 years old and by then I was “compromised.” I enrolled, after graduating from classical high school, in naval design in La Spezia, in those days it was still a closed number, a tough faculty, which has now become Nautical Engineering. I graduated, with a thesis on the IMS, then a friend of mine who was already in Marseille mentioned my name to Gilles Vaton, a designer who at that time was already far ahead in the world of maxis.” . And that is how Emanuele Rossi‘s history as a designer begins. “My first paid project was in my days still in college, in my early twenties, I redesigned the centreboard of my father’s famous 38s5, which had since been sold to another owner. The first real boat, which came out, however, under the name Gilles Vaton, was Blue Diamond, built by JMV Industries, a yard that made ocean openers, a complex boat, a maxi with Keel facelift. At the same time I was working on the design of Jean-Luc Van Den Heede’s boat, Adrien, which later got the east/west circumnavigation record, also inside Vaton’s studio. The first project with only my signature was then the Eryd 30. The Eryd as a studio was born in 2005, at the same time as the Eryd 30, which was done with the very intention of making me known. A render came out in the Journal of Sailing, and a client asked me for her even before the first hull was completed. ERYD SRL was created precisely to accommodate this owner’s request.” Emanuel tells us.

Emanuele Rossi. A “contextual” designer

“I had started with a minimalist philosophy with the Eryd 30,” Rossi explains about his idea of nautical design “I did not want any visible maneuvering to be seen but only the lines, and I always had the idea of performance boats in my head. Over time I have “softened” on certain things, the “mania” for intubating rigging has passed me by, or at least it no longer seems essential and I prefer choices that are more functional and less of a “style exercise.” If I had to summarize my design philosophy today, it is to be “Contextual,” that is, to be able to meet the client’s demands in the needs that are asked of me, provided, however, that I stay within what I recognize as a beautiful object, something that we Italians know well, and that is also performant. In general, I believe that the more mature the customer and the market, the more there would be the possibility of having boats that are less “anonymous” and stereotypical and more specific, with more style and without distorting the boat object.” A philosophy that sums up well what Emanuele Rossi‘s sailing boats are all about. And looking back over his career to date, there are a few boats that have certainly been decisive in his story: “The Eryd 30 for sure, because of the history it had and the awards it earned, then it has a design that I still like today. Then I would also put in the Eryd 40, which is the last one and pushed me quite out of my comfort zone with a search for that ‘something more,’ but I don’t forget the Aureus XV built by Aureus Yacht of Poncin, which was not too successful, though.” Finally, he who has also designed daysailer- and weekender-style boats, we ask him to comment on the world of electric propulsion applied to sailing, an expanding frontier: “Five years ago I would have just told you no, if only as a matter of weight because batteries weigh so much and had until recently little range. Now things have changed and improved, the times are more mature, although then it depends on the context. An inshore racing boat, or a weekender, are very suitable for electric. Or for powerboats I also see hybrids well, you go into the roadstead in electric quietly, but then if you need thrust and autonomy you have classic propulsion.”. Word of Emanuele Rossi, the designer of boats outside the choir.

• At this link, all the mythical stories from the 50 years of the Sailing Newspaper

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1985. The sails of the future are being born. The GdV is in, with Lowell North

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