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Achilli Motors

Old 01-19-2012, 05:21 AM
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Thanks Losna - I eagerly await any info on both Walter or Edwardo.

I remember Lino - having interviewed him in New Zealand in 1986 at the Gold Corp. Worlds - Those were the days - Many boats from Italy were there - USA, Japan,

You are right - Offshore was its best in the 1980's and early 90s -

I filmed the 1992 season for UIM and the Italians then in Europe - in their Format too - The extent they would go too - kitchens to feed so many - it was like the Circus came to town - Today- not even a glimer of what it was - your photo in KW - brings back many fond memories - Thank you !

Phil
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Old 01-19-2012, 07:51 AM
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Originally Posted by Losna
Well, plenty of both!
I'm thinking about starting a thread about the Rainbow Team on those years, I'll try to get some written material (offshore annuals and so on) and to get some pics scanned...
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Old 01-23-2012, 06:56 AM
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I had the pleasure to work with Steve Curtis out of Edwardo Polli's shop outside Milan in 1992 with the 201 Rainbow Bears aluminum Cougar that was powered by Lamborghini. We were the factory boat and it was really neat seeing the side of offshore after racing in the States. Stain was licensed by Cougar to build it's designs in Italy. We had four or five boats being maintained by the same shop with all types of engine / drive combos. Boudin Diesels, Lamborghini, and the Boss's four engined 12 cly flat freshwater cooled Subaru "ex Formula One motors".
Saluti, Cadillac McDaniel
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Old 12-22-2012, 10:54 PM
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Originally Posted by olli
Thank you very much for the info, flying fish. But shame on me! I have to admit that I have never heard of Sergio Abrami before.
It always surprises me when designers/shipyards come out of nowhere (as far as powerboats are concerned) and start right into the heavyweight division of offshore racing. Like the Aurantium Bilboa you mentioned earlier. When Polli brought it back then Aurantium was new to me and I still don't know anything about them. Take Mion's SM Racer built by a shipyard called C4. Don't know anything about them too. Perhaps they are known for products in other fields of the (marine) industry like Revenge, Goetz or ACX.
However these boats were nice exotics in times when there was time and money to experiment.
Hallo, just joined the thread and wished to add some info on the above, I apologize in advance for the length of the post

Sergio Abrami is an established italian yacht designer, well known for his good work into the sailing world. He then became a UIM (or FIM) field commissioner and followed the Class one circus for one or two years, basically checking out the technical files, measures and so forth, in order to verify that the boats were complying with the rules. He must have felt that he could improve on the state of the art, as he resigned from this position, in order to take up the late Domenico Achiilli's proposal to design a brand new composite cat for his team, Achilli Motors. The boat was built by the Maxidolphin sailboat builder, in Franciacorta.

It is true that in Italy, at that time, there was a diffused know how about fairly sophisticated composite boatbuilding, the reason being that Raul Gardini's Tencara had just finished a giant America's Cup campaign, 'Il Moro di Venezia', and literally hundreds of more or less skilled engineers, small shops, suppliers, technicians were looking for ways of 'selling' the expertise they had gained.

Anyway, Achilii's composite prototype from Maxidolphin did not work mostly because, regardless of being built in low temperature carbon prepregs with thermal postcure etc., it was way too heavy.

Scantlings and safe building procedures were not easy to sort out yet, if you wanted to make a boat substantially lighter and stiffer than a tin one, with an equivalent factor of safety: remember the first Ferretti carbon hull by Tencara and several other 'early' carbon sandwich raceboats that had catastrophic failures, for the most various reasons.

At the same time, maybe 1993, I was asked by Lino di Biase, who I knew from Stain first and Cougar then, and his new 'boss' Lamberto Leoni, to design and build a new Class 1 composite Cat.

The reason for asking me (Victory Design) to take up such a challenge, was my specific background. I had been trained and worked for a while at Cougar's and then moved to Turin, to set up Atzori's Stain first proper Technical Office.

I then parted from Atzori and founded Victory Design, whose first jobs was a Class One 'pink' cat built by Lloyd's ships Australia for hairdresser tycoon Stefan (this job was in fact still done with some Stain involvement), still holding several records - a lot of nice videos on Youtube. But, most importantly, I had just designed and project managed the composite monohull SM Racer for Sergio Mion and Beppe Amati.

We were ready to start at the 1993 Venice-Montecarlo with SM Racer, in Jesolo, when the Class 1 circus came for the Venice grand prix. Lino and Lamberto, like many others of the Class 1 game, were impressed by the futuristic lines, powerhouse and performance of SM Racer (which had four SC 800).

I had already designed and raced another very successful composite monohull for the Venice-Montecarlo in 1991, called Winner 50, commissioned by world champion Gianni Rosso (co-founder of C&B Nautica) and powered by twin 840's Badouin diesel, always with our own surface drive custom design (eventually developed into the Flexitab equipment), but SM Racer was far more extreme and in fact I hired composite expert Luca Olivari, already working for Tencara and a pioneer of FEM analysis on planing hulls, to develop appropriate scantlings.

Nautica C4 was (is) a small yard run by a brilliant artisan, Pierino Crosato and his son Andrea: they knew how to work wood at top level, but they had also built the first ever prepreg carbon sailboat in Italy, to my knowledge, I was impressed by the skill of these people, who could manufacture sailboat hulls with advanced WEST derived techniques, layering exotic lightweight woods with carbon fibres, vacuum bagging it all with epoxy resins.

I used their skills to make wooden one off airtight, mirror finished female moulds for SM Racer (NC Cutting was not there yet), so there was no fairing which saved weight, time, money and gave better control on the hull shape as I was already supplying fully plotted 1:1 loftings on polyester film.

For SM Racer, next year, it will be the twentieth anniversary of holding the speed record of the Cowes Torquay, at an average of 91.7 Mph, since 1993.

The problem with the Cat, was that Mr. Leoni incurred some heavy financial troubles (mani pulite in Italy...) and the program had to be halted.

For this boat, I had arranged a dedicated building location, thanks to Tilli Antonelli's and Fausto Filippetti's (two of the Pershing's founders) involvement. With the built at 30%, the project was stopped for about one year, until Lino managed to 'hook' Mr. Polli's back into the game. While there was no discussion about power, which was to come from Lamborghini's, Polli was not sure that he wanted our custom surface drive design, for he thought that other well proven stern drives would take a variable out of the 'risky' prototype. Both Lino and myself resigned immediately, since we strongly believed, already then, in Flexitab's system, i.e. no steering fin ahead of the prop, no steering drive unit, independent rudder well aft. Polli allowed us to go ahead, Lino and myself went back into the program and we built the boat in record time.

This red cat, named Bilba first, then Bilboa and eventually Highlander was a complete success from its first race and had a long racing history, even modified and retrofitted with Seatek diesels, always under our direct design and management, until Mr. Polli eventually managed to barrel roll it it one day, after many many years of good races, when he was foot throttling, steering, managing a tunnel tab, two trim tabs and two drive trims, all alone (Pippo was checking out the route, I guess).

Even then, the glued only (no mechanical fasteners of any kind) safety canopies, a system that I developed with Nautica C4 for SM Racer, I think saved their lives.

Sorry for being so long, I hope this is of some interest for somebody, cheers.
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Old 12-23-2012, 03:54 AM
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Bruno (?), do not worry about the length of story! We enjoy reading them!
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Old 12-23-2012, 05:32 AM
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Originally Posted by littlenige
Bruno (?), do not worry about the length of story! We enjoy reading them!
Can't agree more, littlenige!!!

Just to add pics to the story:


Originally Posted by brunello
... in order to take up the late Domenico Achiilli's proposal to design a brand new composite cat for his team, Achilli Motors. The boat was built by the Maxidolphin sailboat builder, in Franciacorta.


Originally Posted by brunello
...I then parted from Atzori and founded Victory Design, whose first jobs was a Class One 'pink' cat built by Lloyd's ships Australia for hairdresser tycoon Stefan (this job was in fact still done with some Stain involvement)



Originally Posted by brunello
..But, most importantly, I had just designed and project managed the composite monohull SM Racer for Sergio Mion and Beppe Amati.


Originally Posted by brunello
...I had already designed and raced another very successful composite monohull for the Venice-Montecarlo in 1991, called Winner 50, commissioned by world champion Gianni Rosso (co-founder of C&B Nautica) and powered by twin 840's Badouin diesel, always with our own surface drive custom design (eventually developed into the Flexitab equipment...


Originally Posted by brunello
...This red cat, named Bilba first, then Bilboa and eventually Highlander was a complete success from its first race and had a long racing history...
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Old 01-10-2013, 09:51 AM
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Originally Posted by Phil M
Thanks Losna - I eagerly await any info on both Walter or Edwardo.

I remember Lino - having interviewed him in New Zealand in 1986 at the Gold Corp. Worlds - Those were the days - Many boats from Italy were there - USA, Japan,

You are right - Offshore was its best in the 1980's and early 90s -

I filmed the 1992 season for UIM and the Italians then in Europe - in their Format too - The extent they would go too - kitchens to feed so many - it was like the Circus came to town - Today- not even a glimer of what it was - your photo in KW - brings back many fond memories - Thank you !

Phil
True that 1992 was the year a Finn won the UIM title in class 1
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Old 01-10-2013, 04:58 PM
  #28  
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Default Correct !

Originally Posted by MikeyFIN
True that 1992 was the year a Finn won the UIM title in class 1
Here is a shot taken at the Dubai UIM World Championships - it was this race that Achillie spun out at a turn, we did not caputer the flip, because we were changing Tapes, to put in a fresh video tape, I never thought they would flip the boat at a hair pin turn - our film captures the aftermath - The boat was brought to the Victory shop- Changed engines etc. and raced in the final race - Those were the days !

The Video is still available from "BIG SEAS", - Rich and Darren Luhrs, who purchased my entire Video library years ago -

Thanks all for the memories - and if anyone knows how to contact either Walter Ragazzi or Edwardo Poli-, please let me know!

Phil


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