Welcome to Alassio
We are very happy to have you here.
Among us tonight are the mayor of Alassio, Marco Melgrati, Rinaldo Agostini president of the Alassio marina and Carlo Canepa president of the sailing club who have done so much to host us. Thank you for your support and hospitality.
I would like to thank our president Carlo di Borbone, Tim Sukhotin and all of you owners for accepting this trip to Alassio, which I hope you will do again next year.
It was not easy to organise the event, as you can imagine, but we are happy to have done our utmost to welcome you and make sure you have a pleasant weekend.
A special thanks to Marco Marchesi for his tireless work and to Marco Stevenazzi for his support.
I had to sacrifice the Luigia Academy Cup for the success of the regatta because of the situation that unfortunately we have all been experiencing for too long, but which we hope is coming to an end.
The Luigia Academy Cup is an idea I've had since the days when I was class secretary and we raced with Luigi Carpaneda, after whose memory we have named this weekend...
The idea is to ask a number of yacht clubs with sporting achievements to select a crew of young people to represent them, to compete in a knockout competition on the Saturday after our regattas.
As well as being a fun event it will certainly increase the notoriety of our beloved emeraldine which, with the efficient organisation of the Rodelato brothers, is a really fun, sporty, easy and very competitive class.
This week on the two smeraldine kindly made available by the class, one by the Sibello brothers with Agostini father and son and Enzo di Capua and the other with Sommariva, Zampori, Brocanello, Valenti, Antonetto on board, the level of the class has become even more competitive than usual; we hope to have new entries in the class soon...
This year we also had to give up the night challenge, which would have been very tough, because in the Smeralda class, as well as fine sailors, there are also fearsome crews in this discipline...
I conclude by thanking Zaza Carpaneda for her presence, remembering with great affection and sympathy her father Luigi Carpaneda, giving her the picture painted by Alfio Sciuto and Mirco Lai from which we took the poster.