We are most certain that this coming 28-30 October 2011, the beautiful Imperia sea will pamper Dragon sailors coming to race in the Friendship Regatta with mild days and predictable breezes from the West, the well-known Ponentino.
Sailors will have plenty of time to socialize and to taste Ligurian cuisine at its best: local food specialties and wines will wait for sailors when back to port, and a dinner will be offered in one restaurant in the hills overlooking Imperia, a restaurant that is known to many local sailors for its several mouthwatering traditional dishes of Liguria, its olive oil and its wine.
The Porto Maurizio Yacht Club (PMYC) has organized many prestigious regattas in its fifty years of life. It has one of the most important sailing schools along the Ligurian Coast, a school that is now being exported to Cornwall as www.activetalk.it to become a school of life.
But something was amiss: a regatta consecrating the Dragon as the right representative of the most rarefied boating Olympus! This is why the PMYC organizes a Dragon Partnership Regatta this October in the warm waters of Imperia. Imperia is twinned with Friedrichshafen and Newport, two cities characterized by old seafaring and sailing traditions.
Taking opportunity of this friendship agreement between the three cities, the respective Yacht Clubs have agreed to organize a friendship regatta in both Imperia and Friedrichshafen and invite crews from the USA. At the same time, the Quaranta family has offered a memorial trophy named after Ernesto Quaranta: he was the father of Mario, Italian Petticrows dealer, and the grandfather of Andrea, both active Dragon lovers and sailors and members of the PMCY club. Ernesto Quaranta was the mind behind a simple, yet seaworthy wooden sailing boat, designed and presented in a kit for easy self-construction, the Promenade. This was a popular boat that managed to put at sea many Italians.
Si disputerà dal 28 al 30 ottobre la prima edizione del Memorial Ernesto Quaranta. L’evento è organizzato dal Porto Maurizio Yacht Club, già protagonista di grandi manifestazioni negli ultimi cinquant’anni, e vedrà contendersi il trofeo nella classe Dragoni intitolato al velista italiano nelle acuqe di Imperia nel prossimo autunno. La scelta di Imperia e del mare ligure non è casuale: la città infatti è gemellata con Friedrichshafen e Newport, dunque si tratta dell’ennesima occasione per consolidarne la partnership.
Foto: Marco Trainotti