(ANSA) – VIAREGGIO (LUCCA), 21 AUG – “I wondered how a mast like that could have broken and then I read that it didn’t break as had been said at first. We were proud of that mast, we saw it grow day by day: the tallest aluminum mast in the world”. This is how Riccardo Martinelli, 75, a former 5th level worker at Perini Navi in Viareggio and former Fiom delegate at the Tuscan shipyard, remembers the construction of the mast of the Bayesian, the sailing ship that sank two days ago in the Porticello harbour, near Palermo, after a tornado. It was one of the employees, he says, who built the aluminum structure. “To lift it up – recalls Martinelli, who lives in Torre del Lago – a special shed was built. It was worked on the bias, 5 meters of sheet metal at a time that was doubled and welded, to then insert the electronic part. A job that saw three people busy for four months, to make the aluminum part”. “Then special cranes were needed to put it on top of the boat, the yard was blocked for two or three days”. At the time of the launch of the Bayesian, in 2008, which left the Perini shipyards with the name Salute, “we were over a hundred, 3-4 boats were made a year, also in the shipyards in La Spezia”. When the company went bankrupt, in 2021, “there were 60 Perini boats around the world. From the outside – he comments – they might have all looked the same but the interiors were of a luxury that distinguished them”. Everything, Martinelli always recalls, had been started as a hobby by Fabio Perini, now 84 years old, originally from Vorno, in the province of Lucca, “not an engineer but a good mechanical turner”: his fortune was linked to the invention of innovative machinery for the paper sector, the flagship of the Lucca industry. Then the new activity in the nautical sector. “It started with a 25-meter – Martinelli recalls -, in fiberglass, which then went to Prince Ranieri of Monaco”. The peculiarity of Perini sailing ships is the strong automation. Boats that are nevertheless demanding. Perini Navi then becomes a leader in the megasailers sector, the large sailing ships and “wins many awards”. Martinelli does not remember any problems with the boats that left the shipyards, “even when maintenance was done, every 4-5 years: nothing ever happened”. Only once, he recalls, one of the sailing ships, “the Legacy: had a broken mast. But because it ended up in the middle of a tornado in America and the problem was the shrouds”: the vessel, a 48-meter, ended up in the middle of Hurricane Wilma in Florida in 2005. It was dragged onto the sandbanks, without a mast, it did not sink. (ANSA).
2024-08-22 15:45:27