The abundant boat that won a world championship

Not all hulls are born to win. Then all it takes is magic to turn a boat abandoned in a field into a world champion. This is the story of the Jolly Drive told by Maurizio Bulleri, journalist and TV host, in his new book “TheJolly Drive Challenge, “ 117 pages, published by Il Frangente.

The “rock boat”

“When we saw her we wondered why they had abandoned her. Then we put her in the water with the engines and transmissions. It was immediately clear. She was slow in the hull and the steps were a mess. The nickname ‘rock boat,’ that is, one that doesn’t move, was a disgrace we carried with us for a few races.”

Thus began, in 2005, the adventure of Maurizio Bulleri and his crewmates, Riccardo Fatarella and Andrea Bergamini. The rest is told to you by Maurizio Bulleri himself, television host and journalist, in his book “The Challenge of the Jolly Drive,” Il Frangente edition. The protagonist is the “Jolly Drive,” with which they won the P1 powerboat world championship in 2005, despite disastrous premises. I asked Maurizio a few questions to understand what to expect from this book. One, right away, that is fundamental.

Why did you take such a boat?

M.B.: Because we were desperate! After months of putting together sponsors to pay for the championship we had an agreement with a shipyard who would give us the bare hull. In March, however, he tells us that he can’t make the hull for us. He has too many orders! We could have gone to litigation, but we still wouldn’t have been able to compete. So we looked for a boat that had the right length, width, and weight to race under championship rules. There was nothing anywhere. Then, Andrea (Bergamini ed.) made an attempt with Gianfranco Rizzardi. The latter told him that many, many years earlier he had built a boat that he had given to racers, but they had lost track of it. By word of mouth we tried to figure out where it was. We ended up in a meadow, in Lavinio, on the Latium coast. The boat was there, abandoned. We measured it. It was fine and we took it. It was the only chance.

“Then you started winning.”

M.B. In the book I detail the magic of a friend and pilot, Simone Cesati, of Albatro Yacht. After the first two races we were in the yard at Rizzardi’s in Ostia. The boat was very slow, not going. Cesati arrives, looks at the hull, picks up a marker. He unceremoniously draws on the hull the shapes he was going to make, then talks to a Rizzardi’s resiner who was there following him. “Here you have to dig it out, here you have to resin it, here you make this jump, here you make this step.” On this intuition made by eye alone, the boat gained 10 knots. Simone has the gift of being a child of art, he grew up in the boatyard and from an early age he started drawing his own hulls. He didn’t do any studies, it’s just in his blood. Then followed work on the engines, thrusters and propellers beyond lightening, also done by Cesati. Eventually we were going the same way as everyone else.

What made the difference in the end was the crew?

M.B. Definitely. I was at the cuffs, Andrea Bergamini as navigator and Riccardo Fatarella as helmsman. With Andrea, who is my cousin, we are very close since childhood and every nautical operation we did together. Riccardo we met on the race courses. When he asked us to team up, we knew he was a decent person, but we didn’t know him as a racer. Andrea and I were fierce, but we never had that bit of nastiness that he had and that it takes to win. Eventually, when things were starting to work, we also took some risks. But it was a shared idea. And it worked.

Gregorio Ferrari