Banked dramatically on its side, flying four sails under a raging southeasterly tailwind, the 80-foot ketch Stormvogel glided gracefully in the direction of the pastel-coloured hilltop district of Porto Maurizio, Imperia. With nothing but blue skies above and the deep azure below, the vision — freedom personified — was enough to make a grown man, or at least this man, weep for early retirement. In Stormvogel’s wake trailed dozens of other classic yachts, all varnished woods and glinting metal, hulls painted navy and cream like a Ralph Lauren advertisement, timber masts bobbing skywards. Imperia, on the Ligurian coast near Genoa, Italy, may not have the same jaw-dropping vistas of the Amalfi Coast or Sardegna, but as Stormvogelcrew member, Hong Kong photographer Guy Nowell, succinctly put it later, “Racing on a…
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The Rake (Digital) - 1 Issue, February-March 2009 - Issue 2