From: Luigi Semenzato (luigi@paris.CS.Berkeley.EDU)
 Subject: The Giulianova-Tortoreto Crossing 
 Newsgroups: rec.windsurfing, rec.boats
 Date: 1993-12-21 17:21:12 PST 


This is my Christmas gift to rec.windsurfing (and rec.boats, 
although this is my first posting there).

There has no been no wind for two months, and I have no new 
windsurfing stories.  So I have dug up an old story.  Not
exactly about windsurfing, but I am sure that windsurfers
can relate to it.  Or anybody else who likes the sea.


THE GIULIANOVA-TORTORETO CROSSING
Copyright (C) 1993, Luigi Semenzato.

We launched the flagship of the Semenzato fleet at the beach of a
campground on the Adriatic coast, between the mouths of the Adige and
the Po rivers.  Strictly speaking, it wasn't the real launch for the
boat, since we had bought it used; it was the launch of my family.
The boat was large: to unload it from the roof rack of our Fiat 124 we
had to enlist the help of a lifeguard and a waiter from the tiny bar
on the beach.  Some years later, at the peak of my physical strength,
I could lift it and carry it alone, like a giant hat: but at that time
the unloading was a critical operation.

It was a sailboat.  We held strong beliefs against powerboats:
arrogant, noisy, and utterly useless.  People with Alfas owned
powerboats.  The powerboat represented the most obnoxious breed of
Italian vacationers, rich and uncouth and from Rome.  Sailboats were
poetry, mystery, and adventure.  I should say that to my father even
rowboats held a certain fascination, one that I could not quite share.
It was the spirit of the small lake, of the Laguna, of the slow-moving
river in the summer heat.  My father wrote micropoems.  One of my
favorites is `The old rowboat loved the lake.'  That's it: that's the
whole poem.  It loses something in the translation.  [`La vecchia
barca ormai amava il lago'---but how can one possibly translate
`ormai'?]

But my soul was not with lakes or rivers; it was with the sea.  My
mother was born by the sea, and never lived very far from it until she
got married.  My grandparent's summer house was on a hill near the sea
in Abruzzo.  When we were little, my brother and I spent long summers
there.  My father instead is from Padua, an inland city not too far
from the sea: a 45-minute drive, when the traffic is light.  But beach
vacations were uncommon in my father's family---and perhaps in most
families---when he was a kid.

None of us had any experience with sailboats.  We had studied the
theory on a small Mondadori guide.  The boat had minimal equipment and
it was quite obvious how to rig it---except how to connect the top
part of the sail to the top part of the mast, an important step.  In
the booklet, all boats had one boom.  Ours had two: a bottom boom and
a top boom.  We strongly suspected that we should attach the top boom
to the pull-up rope, but had no idea where or how.

We finally decided to simply tie a knot halfway on the top boom.  The
booklet had no examples of knots that would secure a rope to a pole,
so we invented one.  The red and white sail went up, obscuring the
sky.  No more excuses now: off to the water!

We launched the boat.  It floated!  Now, the rudder.  The rudder blade
did not tilt, like it does in most small sailboats.  The rudder could
only be installed when the water was a couple of feet deep, and had to
be removed promptly when returning to the beach or something awful
would happen.  Unfortunately, even the Adriatic has waves; tiny waves,
but enough to make the installation of the rudder a technically
demanding task.  `Are you done yet?' asked my brother Paolo, who was
holding the bow.  `I am getting wet!'

`It's too shallow here!  The rudder will hit the bottom!  Pull the
boat out more!'  was my father's reply from the stern.

My brother moved a bit, then resumed his complaints: `Hurry up!  The
waves are getting bigger!  My swimming suit is all wet!'

`Hold the boat steadier or we'll never make it!  Still too shallow!
Luigi, hold the bottom hole over the bottom peg, while I do the top
peg... there... good... EH NO, don't let it slip!'

`It was a wave!  You try it!'  I objected.

`I am completely wet!  It's too deep here!'  That was my brother's
voice.

`Hold the bow against the wind!'

`I can't!  I am letting go!'

`DON'T LET GO!'  The sea was approximately Force 1.

`Dad, let's try the top peg first.'  The boat had a will of its own,
like a horse who refuses to wear a bridle.  Later we became quite
skilled with that rudder.  Coming in for a landing, I would pull it
out of its hinges and steer holding it in my hands.  But that day we
were almost ready to give up, when finally the rudder went in with a
nice CLUNK.

`All right!  Ready to go!  Luigi, hold the other side while I get
in.'  He got in. `Everybody jump in now!'  We jumped in.  Without
Paolo as an anchor, the boat started to bear off the wind. `Put the
centerboard in!  Where is the centerboard?'

The centerboard was on the beach.  Without the centerboard, there was
no steering.  The boat turned and started moving sideways towards the
sand bar, while terrified beachgoers scrambled out of its path.

`Out!  Paolo grab the bow!'  I jumped out and promptly pulled the
rudder off.  `Luigi! Why did you take the rudder off?' my father asked
sadly.

Oops. `I thought the water was too shallow.'  It wasn't, and Paolo's
sacrifice had been in vain.  Leaving the crippled ship in a hurry, he
had gotten his head wet, and I think he even got some water up his
nose.

When you are a little kid, having your nose raped by sea water (or
pool water, for that matter) is no fun.  Water in the mouth is
acceptable---but even that is a matter of standards.  In the winter my
parents sent me to a swimming school in the outskirts of Padua.  I
hated it.  The instructors were big bullies, and the locker room was
full of little bullies.  We had to keep a diary.  Can you believe it?
`15 November.  Today at warm-up we did twenty push-ups, five pull-ups,
thirty sit-ups, one throw-up.  In the pool, we did 35 minutes of
leg-beating at the pool side, and two laps of leg-stroke with a
floater.'  I never learned to swim free-style.  I already knew the
breast-stroke, I had learned it in a geothermally-heated pool in
Abano, a giant hot tub.  No teeth-chattering there.

One time my mother convinced a friend of hers, the wife of a senator,
to send her son Beppo to swimming school with me.  I knew Beppo and I
knew this wasn't a good idea, but my education did not allow
questioning my mother's initiatives.  Somehow he managed to survive
the warm-ups.  Then, into the pool and off with the leg-beating.  Only
five minutes into the torture, I noticed that Beppo had stopped
thrashing and was climbing up the side of the pool.  This was not
good.  Movie-like images formed rapidly in my mind: the old, shivering
Jew breaking ranks at a concentration camp, and the heartless Nazi
guard empyting his machine gun on him.  Maestro De Gasperi ran over.

`What do you think you are doing?  Eh?' he said grabbing him by the
upper arm, and shaking him.

`I got water in my mouth' said Beppo.  Ouch.  Wrong answer.

`You got water in your mouth?  Ha, ha, ha, ha!'  Maestro De Gasperi
was sincerely amused.  He lifted Beppo by the arm and threw him back
into the pool.  It was Beppo's first and last lesson.

So my soul wasn't with swimming pools either.  But I digress: let's
now move to Giulianova.

A large part of the Adriatic seashore is highly civilized, totally
domesticated.  Giulianova's beach was, like most others, divided among
beach stations: funny-looking buildings, sometimes shaped like a ship,
with a bar and a terrace.  In front of the building, hundreds of large
beach umbrellas lay in rows parallel to the shore.  You could rent
shade and chairs and small private dressing/storage rooms.

We kept the flagship on the strip of beach between the front line of
umbrellas (the one that granted the highest status, and the most
expensive) and the water.  We left it upside down.  That way it was a
little safer from attacks by the little brats.  But not completely.
Here's what would happen: the little brat spots the boat, gets closer,
starts thumping the hull with his hands.  My father begins to notice.
The little brat climbs the hull, and proceeds to jump on it.  My
father becomes clearly displeased.  My brother and I go and complain
to the kid's father, typically from Rome, who is irritated by our
fastidiousness---how can a small kid hurt that big boat?  Do you think
this is your own private beach?  In the meanwhile the little brat
slips, bonks on the hull, and falls face-first in the sand.  The
screams interrupt our arguing.  The father stands up to go recover the
little brat, and throws a final nasty look at us (`See what you have
done!').  The next little brat is ten yards away and approaching
fast.

At this point we would feel compelled to actually use the boat, and
since it was safe from brats only at a certain distance from the
shore, we managed to get a solid sailing experience on it.  Armed with
this new confidence, we began to plan the daring Giulianova-Tortoreto
expedition.

It was going to be glorious.  We had some relatives from Rome who
spent the summer in Tortoreto, the next city on the coast north of
Giulianova.  We were going to surprise them from the sea, our colorful
sail appearing from behind the horizon.  And it would not be a simple
task: about halfway between the two resorts we would have to cross the
mouth of the Salinello river.  This river did not have a mouth every
summer: every other year or so there wasn't enough water.  But that
year it did, and the mouth was an impassable obstacle on foot---at
least without getting one's swimming suit wet.

We left for the beach earlier than usual.  My father drove.  He was
happy, and in between insults to the Teramo driving habits he coined
several micropoems, some of them with a rhyme.  The beach was almost
deserted.  We got the flagship ready, loaded the supplies, and sailed
off.  The wind was light but steady, and from behind.  We made good
progress.  We were alone in a big, big sea.  The crew let a big cheer
once it was clear that we had passed the Salinello.  The small smudges
of color on the far-away beach became the umbrellas of Tortoreto.  Our
relatives, the Miglioratis (which means `Improved' in Italian), were
on the beach.  It worked out perfectly.  They were looking towards the
sea (mostly for lack of better things to look at) and they saw a
minuscule sailboat getting closer and closer.  `Where is that boat
coming from?' they kept wondering.  No boat had left their beach.
When we landed, the surprise was enormous and we were greeted like
heroes.

We made such a big impression that the head of the Migliorati family,
Marcello, bought a small sailboat for himself, a bit smaller than
ours.  But he was a rather large person, and was unable to sit in the
boat without capsizing it.  He tried to sail it for an entire summer,
then gave up and bought a huge powerboat with two large black outboard
engines.  He always admitted, though, that he liked sailboats better,
but he had given up after realizing he would never achieve the sailing
class of the Semenzatos.

In the early afternoon we prepared for the return trip.  The wind was
still from the south: we would have to tack.  We bade our farewells
and sailed away.  Leg after leg, three hours later we had barely
reached the Salinello.  The wind was becoming lighter and the current
was also against us.  The upwind performance of the Semenzato flagship
was far from stunning, even without the current.  Leg after leg, we
were no longer making any progress.  We landed just above the mouth of
the Salinello, and walked the rest of the way in the shallow water,
pulling the boat.  We arrived at our beach after sunset, thirsty and
sunburned.  We never told the Miglioratis.

Next year, as the summer approached, my father brought home a few
brochures of outboard engines.  Our flagship was designed to accept an
engine from 2 to 6 hp.  My father bought a 2 hp Johnson.  It was
tiny.  You could fill its tank with two glasses.  Still, it managed to
push the boat---hard to tell how fast.  We planned another Tortoreto
expedition.  We sailed off with the wind behind us, and arrived in no
time at all.  Again, we were greeted like heroes.

On the return trip, the conditions were identical to the previous
year.  We stopped making progress roughly in front of the Salinello.
But this time we had a motor!  We pulled the sail down, started the
motor, putt-putt-putt-putt, and waited.

Behind the beach the green hills of Abruzzo faded in the summer mist.
Water sloshed against the hull.  The constant whirr of the engine was
killing the poetry of sailing.  Half hour later the mouth of the
Salinello was still in the same position.  We landed just ahead of it
and pulled the boat the rest of the way.  We arrived after sunset,
tired and hungry.  Still, we had had our share of glory.  To this day,
the Giulianova-Tortoreto crossings remain the most successful cruises
my family ever took.