2013. Mario Oriani leaves us

Mario Oriani. Story of an Italian who loved the sea, boats and newspapers

From Boats to Motors 2013, no. 4, May, pp. 18-19.

The founder of Barche a Motore, Mario Oriani, left us recently. To remember him is to trace the history of Italian boating and also of a fine way of doing journalism.

I take over this column, for more than 20 years my father Mario held it. He is leaving it only because he is no longer here, otherwise he would never have given it up. It was too important for him, a reason for living, to dialogue every month with you, my sea-loving friends. Mario Oriani had two great passions: journalism and the sea, of which his love for boats is the highest expression. His passions he always pursued them to the end. Two passions, journalism and boating, that intersect, intersect, merge. And they have great values. I think my task now, as it was my father’s, is to pass on to young people that spirit of resourcefulness, positivity, route-finding, desire to discover and confront, with fear sometimes but without fear, that animates all those who share a passion for the sea and for true journalism. We over fifty, but also the younger ones, have to do this for our children and the new generations. And people like you dear readers are important, because you transmit these values every time you go out to sea. (Luca Oriani)

We reprise on this page one of Mario Oriani ‘s most successful 360° , where he recounts the beginnings of his passion for motorboats and makes some remarks about today’s seafaring. A lesson in the sea, passion, journalism.

“Who is this guy, what history does he have behind him to allow himself to speak so haughtily about boating?” And so I introduce myself (or reintroduce myself) and step back many years when, in my early days in journalism, naturally with very little money in my pocket, I decided to save up to buy myself something that would stay afloat and have an outboard at the stern that pushed hard. I looked around-we were at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s-and discovered that what I wanted was a dream. Indeed a chimera. I lowered my airs and looked for something that would earn me the money to accelerate the program. Fortune came my way: the “Six Days Cycling” was being prepared at the Palazzo dello Sport in Milan, and the organizers were looking, pro tempore, for someone to take care of the variety show taking place in the parterre and the press office. He was proposed to me, a stroke of luck, by a famous industrialist of the time, Giovanni Borghi, owner of Ignis, in whose factories they produced refrigerators by the millions. Ignis also had a cycling team and that’s why it financed the Six Days.

I agreed, I would work, by day, at the newspaper, by night at the Sports Palace. Things went well. A great success, so much so that Borghi wanted to reward me with an extra I could choose. I chose, don’t be horrified, a Bianchi catamaran, from the bicycle factory for which Fausto Coppi, a good friend of mine, was racing, who was thinking of diversifying his production by entering the nautical market, but without any expertise. He was chasing the dream of “boating for all.” The Katamar, as it was called, was a small fiberglass catamaran that melted in the sun so much that, with the tools the factory gave out, there was a large tin can full of mastic to plug holes and cracks. The engine was the Piaggio one for the Ape van turned marine, which went into motion by pulling the cable with a handle. In motion? But when did it ever? Most of my time was spent, that summer, on the beach pulling this damn rope only managing to do a few laps and a few baths being careful not to turn off the engine even when stationary in the Ligurian gulf of Riva Trigoso, where I used to go and still go on vacation and where the old sailors and the skilled workers of the local shipyard rightly treated me as “Milanes in mar…” So it was then that with my “intellectual” hands, accustomed to typing on the typewriter, I contrived to be a mechanic. But when the Piaggio was running the little five-meter catamaran, from memory, I must say it ran like a “Cigarette.” Or, at least, I thought so. The big raid, I will never forget, I remember well, was the crossing of the gulf from Sestri Levante to Arenzano. Round trip in one day. Despite the fact that, as an out-rider, I had shown myself until then to be modest, the rumor that I knew about boats circulated in the milieu in Milan.

So I was given the task of proofing for a newspaper. I tried to study something and, I gratefully acknowledge today, that frequenting the shipyards turned out to be valuable and profitable. Thus, finally, I was able to buy the boat of my dreams at the time, a used Riva. I confess, I still owed some debt; a used Riva powerboat is still a Riva. As a journalist, meanwhile, my career, fortunately, was going well, I also became an editor and so to “get,” as they say, a cabin cruiser. Nothing special. Not as snobbish as the Riva, but I can say, that the boat the one I was keeping on the dock at that time, was the latest fashion. It was in the late sixties. Since then I have had many other boats. All of them beautiful. All beloved. I spent my vacations always on a boat, of course, since I had one that had a cozy cabin, with a bed and not a kennel and, in the so-called bathroom, there was a toilet bowl that flushed well. Now I’ve gotten a little lazy and I let friends take me, but I still like to be at the helm. “You have a good eye shot, you can catch waves,” they tell me. I don’t believe it.

There, on estimated navigation with charts I am a “crack,” as the British say. Not like the guy who one summer in Capraia, with a speedboat the size of an ocean liner, asked me, “Excuse me, for Livorno which way do I go? My Gps broke.”… “But do you have a compass?”… “Yes, but it is not compensated”… “Then go straight, always straight I recommend, and when you see land ask someone if you should tack left or right. Don’t ask the Coast Guard boat if you meet it, otherwise they will take away your license and escort you to Livorno, this yes, but to impound your boat.” The motor boat, I confess, I like it if it goes fast. Otherwise it’s a whine.

Mario Oriani

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