2001. The boats Dalla Pietà, the heir to “Bepi”

Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. Here is one of the stories we were most passionate about.

Giorgio Dalla Pietà. The heir to the Bepi

From Motor Boats 2001, no. 9, October, pp. 76-79.

Giorgio Dalla Pietà, Bepi’s third son who has remained sole owner of the shipyard founded by his father, has ambitious plans and clear ideas about the future. He has doubled the yard’s production area and is preparing to make bigger and bigger boats.

Giorgio Dalla Pietà is the last son of Giuseppe, the founder of a shipyard that, although small in size, has always had a great reputation in Venice. Giuseppe, known as Bepi, was a real talent. Giorgio would belong to the second generation of the Dalla Pietà family, although the great age difference with his older brother, Gianni, dividing them about twenty years, makes him slip-as he himself ironically points out-to the third generation. A matter of years, but also of ideas. Still, we are talking about a family tradition rich with half a century of experience. Although, to hear him talk, his passion for boats and the sea seems to have been written in his DNA for milennials. If you ask him, “When did you decide to get into boat making?” he looks at you and says as if you were out of touch with the world, “All my life. I never thought about doing anything else.” “Elementary, Watson”-you would be forgiven for saying. So let’s go back to the basics.

Power Boats: How and when did your father start making boats?
Giorgio Dalla Pietà: “He started here in Venice, first for his own pleasure, a hobby, then to meet the demands of others. But one must keep in mind that his work was something else. He was in the service of the Gaggia. one of the most well-known Venetian families.”

BaM: What boats did he make?
George: “Four-and-a-half-foot, outboard pleasure boats. He had been building them since 1949 in the warehouse of the Gaggia mansion and with a certain sophistication, as is usually the case when one does something more out of passion than obligation. He was one of the first in Italy to use marine plywood and was always aware of what was new in the market, favored by the fact that the family he worked for had frequent contacts with the United States. It must be said that the Gaggia family always appreciated my father’s work and it was probably they themselves who encouraged him to set up his own business. He did not let them tell him twice and at the fine age of 46 – it was 1958 – he changed his life completely. He opened the boatyard at Giudecca and started making those beautiful boats that I strive to continue making today, albeit with different criteria and in a different market reality. My brother Gianni, who was 17 at the time, immediately started working with him. I was not yet born. I came into the world two years later. At a few months old I was already being taken on a boat, and at 2 years old I was holding a rudder. See why I couldn’t have done anything else with my life?”

BaM: Got it. Tell us then when you started working on the construction site.
George: “I did accounting, just to do it, then I went to the military and when I came back I went into construction. I started practicing in administration, then went into sales and finally into the various aspects of production. The shipyard, meanwhile, had moved to Marghera for reasons of space, to rented sheds. Finally, in 1987, just to conclude the history of the shipyard, we bought the land here in Fusina, where we are now.”

BaM: You therefore came to the site when fiberglass had become established as a construction material.
George: “It was a painful period. In the 1970s almost all the shipyards converted to fiberglass. My father didn’t want to know about it. And he was not the only one here in Venice, so much so that they formed a consortium in the historic center to defend wood. A kind of resistance committee.”

BaM: We imagine that your brother Gianni must have gone to great lengths to convince him.
George: “In the face of my father’s will, which counted and weighed, I assure you , my brother could do little. Let us say that my father had to surrender to the evidence of the market. That of fiberglass was expanding rapidly and that of wood, by contrast, was shrinking. And we did not escape this fate, even though we tried to make bigger boats and renew the lines. By now something counted for me in the yard, too, and in the face of the concentrated onslaught of his sons, my father gave in to fiberglass. But it never went down well with him. Shortly after the new yard opened, we attended the 1987 Jesolo Boat Show, where we presented our new fiberglass DP6s. The local television station interviewed my father, asking his opinion of the boats on display. He quietly said what he thought, and that was that fiberglass sucked for him, regardless of what we ourselves were displaying in our booth!”

BaM: Thus began the modern history of the Dalla Pietà shipyard in 1987.
Giorgio: “It was the year of change and renewal. We started with small boats, the DP6 precisely, then we did the 9-meter, the 12-meter and so on.”

BaM: Who does the boat designs?
Giorgio: “Until the mid-1970s my father always took care of it, then when we started to produce in fiberglass, we turned to external designers, such as architect Valsecchi and Carlo Trezzi, who worked for us until a few years ago. In the meantime, there was also the growth of people working internally, such as Claudio Di Stefano, who now does the complete design of the boats for us. He continues to stay with us, even though he now works independently.”

BaM: How did your father react to what must have been a revolution for him?
Giorgio: “As long as he was alive (he died in a tragic sailing accident in the Lagoon in 1988, ed.) he was always close to us with valuable advice. And then his experience remained. Our hulls are always derived from his designs. All the experimentation we have done on hulls since the 1960s at Giudecca, when we were building racing boats, has certainly not been lost.”

BaM: The Bepi remained famous for that very strange side-less, rhomboid-shaped boat that was christened “Manta” and was the prototype of many victorious boats in circuit powerboat racing.
George: “He named her so because with her somewhat sloping deck she is reminiscent of the large fish of the Raiformi family. It is a boat of great aerodynamic lift, extremely innovative. She was born on a rainy Sunday. My father was at home looking in a newspaper at the silhouette of an airplane. Suddenly he started sketching it and turned it into a boat. Even today in powerboat racing, all boats in the T classes (outboard sport boats with “V” hulls. i.e. Traditional, ed.) are of the Manta type. Many people have copied it. If you think that the boat was born in 1967 and I won a World Championship 20 years later with the same boat design and in marine plywood to boot, when everyone else was using Kevlar, you will understand the validity and genius of my father’s design.”

BaM: Given the big age difference with Gianni, who was almost from another generation, how did you get along? We talk about business ideas, market strategies, but also boat types, choices, tastes.
Giorgio: “As far as boats are concerned, we have always agreed on what to do and how to do it. Some disagreement actually existed on market strategies. We had quite different ideas. However, we would compromise, like good brothers, and in the end a plan of common agreement was always found.”

BaM: Until Gianni got tired and self-retired, leaving you carte blanche. We provoke him, but he doesn’t fall into the trap. He responds vaguely and smilingly:
George: “More or less.”

BaM: Let’s gloss over that. Tell us then what your ideal construction site should look like?
Giorgio: “It must have quality and quantity. We always made boats of great quality. But we used to make very few. I’m talking about recently, after my father passed away. Four, five, maximum six a year. Instead, we need to make at least 15. We will get there, I hope, in four or five years. We have doubled the yard’s production space, and we are organizing to reach the goals we have set for ourselves.”

BaM: What are the strengths of the Dalla Pietà Shipyard today?
Giorgio: “A product of quality and class, with an innovative design that also maintains the classic and elegant lines. And then the offer of the widest customization. That is, we do not offer an industrial, standardized product, but one that can be customized on demand.”

BaM: To what extent? Generally you try to minimize these demands.
George: “Of course, there are also those who refuse to change the coffee machine. Instead, we want to please our customers as much as possible. It is obvious that these customizations mainly concern the interiors, the furnishings, but also the spaces. Equally obvious is that these adaptations require more work, more time and more cost. But people who buy certain types of boats don’t look at all-too insignificant differences in expenses.”

It cannot be said that Giorgio Dalla Pietà does not have clear and precise ideas about what he wants. He has in mind a great shipyard that makes important boats for important people, customizing them to the maximum. Only in this way does a large boat find its human dimension. The way Bepi‘s boats had, with that good, live, woody smell. II Bepi was an artist in his field. Giorgio is a manager with modern ideas, ready to understand and anticipate market tastes. Different eras, different ideas, but one constant over time: the beautiful boats of Dalla Pietà.

By Riccardo Magrini

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