Summer of 86

She was deeply flawed but I was passionate about her. I made her better, I made her sing and she performed for me and for me alone.

Belfagor was a Libera D, 7,50 metres long. The hull had been designed with the IOR in mind, canoe body, fine in the ends, tiny little laser sized rudder to reduce wetted surface. What were they thinking when they took out 500kgs. and slapped racks and trapezes on her?

No one had managed to sail her more than a few hundred metres when they asked me to see what could be done. For starters you just had to sail. You had to know that if you heeled more than 15degrees you had to call a tack because tack she would, like it or not.

We went to work on an improvement program. The number of crew trapezing was increased to 5. The next step was to control her on the downwinds. I remembered having heard tall tales about 18s and how they were using such long poles (before A sails) that in a puff you reportedly had to push the tiller down as the boat would just bear off on its own, going sideways through the water. The equivalent of opposite lock to correct oversteer on a car; you had to align the rudder blade with the flow just to avoid tripping over it. So ass backwards, it was said to spoil a helmsman's reflexes for anything else.

On goes a 6 m long pole and a narrow head, wide foot, super flat 100 sq. m. spinnaker. The tall tale turns out to be not so far from the truth. We win our class in the Cento and a bunch of other races too.

That summer I sailed four long distances on her, each one 19 hours long, never taking my hand off her helm (nobody else on board dared to touch it). What did she give me for all that attention? Pain. I know no one's made her sing since but is that consolation?