So I lived 5 years on a 9-meter boat

In the middle of last month I was taking a peek at the “classifieds section” when I see that there is a Calafuria 30 for sale. I don’t know her much as a boat, but I have heard about her. So, out of curiosity, I start reading the description: what engines it has, accessories, work done and so on.

Then I come to the last sentence of the announcement by Luigi Gulinelli, the owner:“My wife and I have lived for 5 years, 12 months a year, on this boat in Marciana Marina, Elba Island, without any special problems: I am selling because my motor conditions are no longer compatible, having now marked difficulties even at standing alone. The boat is currently stored at the Sailing Club, also in Marciana Marina. ”

A bell immediately goes off in my head. What does it mean to live on a 9-meter boat in two, every day for five years? Perhaps in sailing more, but among power boat owners it is not such a usual choice, quite the contrary. I try to write an email to Luigi, who very kindly replies and tells me about his experience.

This is what it means to turn a watercraft into your own home on the water.

Luigi, you have lived five years on the boat. Now you are selling it. Are you fed up with it?

Louis – The truth is I can’t physically do it anymore, that’s why I’m selling it. I was a family physician. They retired me a year before the deadline because because of a health problem I can’t do the stairs and all these things here anymore. I really like the sea, so I always had dinghies, various traps. Not being able to go to the mountains anymore, I said, “Now I’m going to get a boat to stay there.” I went for a ride to Marciana Marina on the island of Elba, and by chance I saw this Calafuria. To make a long story short, I bought it. My wife had also recently retired, and Marciana Marina is spectacularly beautiful. So we stayed on the boat 5 years and a few months, every day, every year except a few rare times to visit a son here in Romagna. To give some numbers, out of 365 days at least 350 we have been on the boat, winter and summer.”

Is this a choice you recommend?

Louis – “I guarantee it was not beautiful, it was “very beautiful.” And especially in winter when the tourism obviously goes away and only a few crazies stay in the marina. Then at those times loons come in from all over the world with catorces that one wonders how the hell they stay afloat. Special encounters that more cannot. I get along great with these people also because the routine bores me. As an experience, five years on a boat I recommend to everyone. When you wake up in the morning, but also at night. I have always slept very little, but here you are not locked in a room you turn on the light. No, you’re in a wonderful place during the day with spectacular sunshine and at night with all the lights in the harbor, the shrouds flapping.”

Every day a surprise?

Louis – “A lot of that happens, yes. It’s a new thing, it’s an unexpected thing, full of pleasant 99% surprises, now and then there’s some unknowns, but that’s part of the game.”

A Calafuria 30 as a home. With your wife did you also sail?

Louis – “So, I said to myself when I bought it, “Ah, now I have the Tuscan archipelago within reach. I’m going to turn it all around! I’m going to tour it all! Then you go out of the harbor with the boat and you say, “Oh my God, what a beautiful place this is here,” but you wait, you hold on, and you go straight. You go another 300 meters and say, “Madonna, what a beautiful place this is here. Wait until I pull straight.” After 3-4 times you say, “But what should I go looking for?” It’s a paradise here! In fact, I only turn there, 3-4-5 miles around Marciana Marina, but there are spectacular coves and bays. So where should I go? Who makes you consume naphtha? Even those I’ve met who are from there say that. Except for the tight winter months it doesn’t always pay to go around much because it’s all packed, you have to put yourself in columns, wait here, wait there.”

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But who makes you do it?

Louis – “That’s right, who makes you do it? Then the question becomes, “Why look for a place maybe a little bit nicer, but full of people when I have what I like here within reach?” No rush, no one pushing, pressing, shouting.”

At this point it becomes logical to ask: Have any modifications been made to the interior of the boat to make it more habitable?

Luigi Guinelli – “I was lucky enough to find a boat built by a guy who was a ship captain, retired and had a boat made for him, so there is everything and more. There’s everything that anybody has at home. Except you’re in the water attached to a dock with people coming and going, cats running around. To me it’s a spectacle. Of course it’s a fully equipped boat: air conditioner, heater, except for the television that could have been there, but I didn’t want the television. There’s no point in boarding if you’re going to watch television.”

And to watch the games you can go to the harbor bar….

Luigi Guinelli – “But what! Television is fine when you are in hospice that you don’t get out of bed, rather than nothing you watch television, but as long as you are still able to socialize with someone television is suicide.”

For cooking on board?

Louis – “I have two electric stoves, and when you have to make food you do one thing first and then do that other thing later. Also the sink is tiny so you wash one dish at a time. At the same time, for eating, you try to use one each and for cutlery the same. Afterwards you rinse them on the sump when you can, which is pretty much all the time except when it rains. You have a full day because to do the thing you do in the kitchen at home, it takes you three times the time there, because the stove is small, you have to do things one at a time, but you enjoy them even more and then you have all the days to yourself. In my case, what the hell do you have to do? No one is running after you, you forget the clock or you forget the days of the week. Even if you take half an hour to eat instead of five minutes, isn’t that better? Digestion thanks you.”

Trivia question: humidity?

Luigi Guinelli- “If you have a minimum working air conditioner the boat was as dry as the house. Also because sleeping with humidity, I’ve experienced it several times, it’s unpleasant and so you don’t do 5 years like that. You have to remember that you are in a boat that is 9 meters, so when one takes a shower, the other one waits and afterwards, when he is done showering, you have to clean up a little bit because the soap splashes. Then you shower yourself and clean up, dry the mirror, dry the porthole, open the porthole to change the air. There’s a whole set of minimal rules that are the beauty of that life there. Of course if you don’t follow them, then afterwards the boat is full of moisture. If you leave water inside the boat, of course that vaporizes and dampens everything, you have to be careful. Even when you cook pasta, you cook pasta only when you can keep the porthole open because it’s a nice day and the steam goes out. Otherwise you cook the pasta on a stove in the cockpit if you don’t want to fill the boat with moisture. There is a minimum of head, of course, but that doesn’t depend on the boat. You need that head to live aboard and if you have it good, if not you stay home…”

But how did the passion for boats come about?

Louis – “I am from Massa Lombarda, 13 km from Imola and 6 km from Lugo di Romagna. So starting with sad things, both my brother and I were polio in the 1950s, I’m from 1953, I got it in 1954, the pediatricians at Gozzadini in Bologna told my parents, ‘Look, there’s nothing you can do. You try to throw them in the water, the remaining muscles develop is all you can do. Fortunately my dad and mom were masters so they were freer in the summer at the time. Little by little they made themselves a kind of home in Punta Marina (near Ravenna ed.) on the Riviera. Well, they made it because after two years they didn’t want us to rent anymore because they were afraid we would infect their children. My dad was a guy more or less like me. Standing still was not his trade, and he used to embark with local fishermen. They had little boats, five-meter gozzetti. He used to take me too, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been boating in all kinds of vehicles.”

What boats have you sailed on?

Luigi Guinelli – “Of the 10-footers, 10-footers with the three-horse Johnson twin-cylinder from the 1950s or others like the Carnites. Then I became an adult and my dad died. In the meantime I became a doctor, made a little more money and got a little bigger boats. A 7.60-meter San Prospero, a really livable boat because I also had a small child.”

Was it your ideal boat?

Luigi Guinelli – “I actually like the dinghy because you have the water a fingertip away. In a boat it’s like being on a bus. The water is there, but you see it running under the windows. If you want to live on the water, though, you need a boat. So as soon as I had the opportunity to be retired and the luck of a wife with the right sensibility to share all that, I did. with a person who appreciates those things that you are so lucky to be able to have and that almost nobody has.”

Instead for the work on the boat, living on it?

Luigi Guinelli – “I have always sailed in the Adriatic in places where the water is very warm, and if you give antifouling in March-April when you put down, after two months it has to be redone, because there is a hell of a lot of vegetation. Here every year and a half, even two, if you go under it, out of the harbor with a spatula. And then to pull it up I used to get along. Living there I became friends and I would ask him to pull it up on Mondays. It was done in the morning, fairly early, around 10:30 it was already out of the water, washed with the pressure washer, and by noon the hull was dry. I would give antifouling and then put the boat down. It would dry up at most two days and I would still sleep in the boat anyway. The antifouling problem was a relative problem that was very easily solved, but there were often other problems.”

What kind of problems?

Luigi Guinelli- “The mechanics because I have a ball that everything has to work. In the boat it’s not like that, in the boat something is always wrong. There are so many things: pumps, counter-pumps, contacts. You go to bed that everything is working, then you wake up and something is always wrong, but if it is not big trouble it is acceptable. I have to say that among all the gizmos and counter gizmos at the beginning I didn’t understand anything. I used to be a doctor so one thing instead of fixing it maybe I would break it more. Then I had to get another more experienced “boatman” to fix it for me. So on and on. Learn this, learn that other, now I can more or less do it myself.”

So in the five years you also learned to do your own work?

Luigi Guinelli – “Yes yes, you learn because either you become autonomous or you never get out of the harbor. Small and medium problems, various hassles, there’s all the time. Often they are also simple. To say, at the end of August I go out with the boat and I had a friend and it was his first time in the boat. Three miles and an engine goes on alarm. Well, it was the temperature sensor wire, which had corroded with moisture and was signaling an excessive temperature that wasn’t there. It drops in rpm and goes into protection. Good thing I have two engines. Imagine that because of a wire that has oxidized you’re there saying, “oh my God, help, how do I do that?” Instead, thanks to daily “practice” with problems after fifteen minutes of realizing what the heck had happened, I fixed the wire, cut off a piece, the deteriorated one, and reattached it tentatively. So I went back in peacefully and blissfully, then replaced everything. What’s nice is that you feel good afterwards…. “I did well,” I think. Even in the problems.”

And now do you sail?

Luigi Guinelli – “Right now to do five meters takes me an hour and a quarter assuming I can do it. If I want to get off the boat, go on the fly, now I can’t do it anymore. Inside the cabins in the boat there are four steps. It is a very significant problem for me, I get nervous. So now I keep the dinghy I’m going to lie in it, from the dock I’m going to jump off and go. The Calafuria yes, I’m selling it, but believe me I’m so sorry.”

Gregorio Ferrari

Do you have a special story of passion for the sea or your powerboat like the one Luigi told us? Write to us at in**@***********re.com