August 1, 2010

Another Blue Sea

Do not spread your imagination too far, as this title doesn't represent the finding of a new planet where may be in one thousand years from now, you can ship your boat or tow it to your space shuttle and navigate these newly found seas. Another Blue Sea is a very nice Italian website Altromareblu.com which centres around traditional motor boats. But the articles in this website are in actual fact much more to this.
Altromareblu does in fact feature articles by fourteen experienced nautical journalists and designers, of which also are legendary names as Renato "Sonny" Levi, and Franco Harrauer. These article impress how trough the Internet knowledge has become lazy, but has also reached endless learning. For example in this site I learned with much impress to myself that Renato Levi actually invented the deep Vee hull shape on the same year as Ray Hunt did in 1958. Another great story which I read about a year ago about the stern drive invention which involved figures as Jim Wynne, Carl Kiekhafer, and Charlie Strang, was that the Italian MTM in fact already had a similar technology in the thirties and was also used with good success by the Italians in the second World War. Cabi Cattaneo the inventor of such drive also used it on a racing Baglietto in 1936. But apparently Johnson also had a similar invention with photos to prove it in the thirties but abandoned the project because of the depression of the period.
Altromareblu also features very provocative articles as are translated from Italian; The New is Not Nice and the Nice is not New, and A Boat is Not a Car both written by the over half a century Italian boating journalist Antonio Soccol. These articles are both a provocation although to be honest what is written has to be taken with a pinch, but they do represent a consumer critic in the way boats are purchased. For example some facts how really boats in the shows have always the hull covered, and that the salesmen most of the times don't know the shape below the waterline and what this represents. Rock Around the States also by Soccol is another great line up of articles which involves the story of the people who made the difference on the other side of the Atlantic.
The only sad thing for this website is that it is only available in Italian, although Internet again can help here with tools as Google translation or similar.

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