Ettore Santarelli was born in Forli in October 1924 and as a teenager moved with his family to Ravenna. He lived for many years at No. 7 Via Ignazio Sarti in the same building where Epaminonda Ceccarelli lived, who would be one of his best friends during his Ravenna period. The place, his aspirations, a bit of destiny, brought him into contact with the world of boating through his attendance at the Naval School, a professional institute then very popular in the coastal area, which granted him the certificate of shipwright. Here he learned the first rudiments of nautical construction. But at the end of the wartime conflict Santarelli realized that the title he had earned was not sufficient for his aspirations and enrolled in evening classes at the surveyor’s institute in Ravenna, where he graduated.
Ettore was already a passionate sailor, but life choices seemed to take him away from the world of nautical design: the 1950s saw him a state employee at the Civil Engineering Department in Ravenna. With sailing, however, the “feeling” of boyhood has not ended; on the contrary, it continues through passionate participation in regattas on the Romagna coast, first with the Beccaccino, then with the FD. Ettore in 1956 began to build his first sails aided by his wife Albertina, “Berta” for all fans of the sailing sport.
Since 1955 Ettore has been racing in the F.D. class, and in August 1957 when the F.D. world championship was being raced in the friendly waters of Rimini, he managed to participate in a side race on an F.J. equipped with his sails and won. His is the only Italian victory. In the winter between 1957 and 1958, only a year and a half away from the possibility of getting the so-called “baby pension,” he decides to quit the state bureaucracy and move to Gardone on Lake Garda to give himself definitively to sailing by becoming a sailmaker by profession. These are times of continuous study and experimentation, and Ettore begins a wonderful collaboration with Italo Galetti, who in Peschiera builds both the F.J. and the F.D. out of laminated wood. Ettore assists Galetti in refining, within the limits of tonnage, the designs of these two boats that are making their mark on the market and in defining their equipment. Ettore is gifted with great intuition in fine-tuning modifications to the hulls.
.After three or four years in Gardone, where sails were tested in the backyard hanging from a mast of a dinghy, in 1962 Ettore moved to Desenzano where he established the headquarters of the sailmaker’s shop and where he later began to build the Strale, his first project. To trace the origins of the Strale we have to go back to the 1960s when the Italian Sailing Federation was looking for an intermediate racing boat that could fill the gap between the small Flying Junior, a famous boat for initiation into sailing, and the F.D. at that time the most propelled of the moving dinghy boats. Ettore did not let the opportunity pass him by, and in the fall of 1963 he began to draw the first lines of the hull, lines that he revised again during the winter while in the spring of 1964 he began construction of the mold. Ettore, in addition to making sails, builds wooden masts for drift boats and then moves on to building laminated wood boats, of which the strale is the first example. The prototype is launched in Desenzano in March 1965 and is all produced by Ettore: design, hull, mast and sails. Thus begins an adventure that will bring him much satisfaction and a final bitterness at the failure to achieve “Olympic status,” awarded instead to the 470-a design by Frenchman André Cornu . An entire generation of sailors will race on the stral with highly successful championships that will also greatly involve Garda. ” Ghibellino” is the first stral built , to be followed by more than 1,200 examples in wood, fiberglass and eventually composite produced by other licensed shipyards .
But let us return to the mid-1960s when Santarelli’s career underwent a major evolution. The desire to take boats born for cruising into racing had not yet made many proselytes . However, the commitment of designers to this sector of recreational boating is increasingly noticeable, and much attention is paid to boats that were born for cruising and are beginning to show up on race courses instead. 1968 is an important year for Ettore. In fact, it is in this period that Santarelli designs and builds in his Desenzano shipyard his first work in the field of racing-cruising boats, passing from the world of dinghies and that of bulb boats : “Raffaella ” a boat about 9 meters long with tapered shapes, designed, however, without particular reference to tonnage rules, is born.
In the nautical world the need for a small fast cruising boat is becoming more and more evident.Ettore in 1969 gives life to “Cristina ” a boat with a length of m.7.30 that achieves many successes in regattas . Another happy project of this period is “La bella gigogin “, the prototype always in laminated wood of the series “S9” designed and built by the same Ettore in the shipyard of the new marina in Padenghe that he went to direct .
In 1972 a new adventure appears on the horizon where Santarelli operates in the construction of other people’s projects and the first episode is Cassiopea a project of Daniele Buizza that will seize many successes in various editions of the Centomiglia with Oscar Tonoli and Franco Nocivelli . Later it is Giorgio FalcK who entrusts Ettore in 1976 to build Guia IV a design by Ben Lexcen to participate in the “Ostar,” a prestigious transatlantic regatta. In the same year, the “Half Ton Cup” a regatta was organized in Trieste, with the best of the world’s shipbuilding and design industry at the start. Dominating the race course is Harold Cudmore a hitherto unknown Irishman who wins aboard” Silver Shamrock.” Undoubtedly a very important success in this event is the result of “Perception “a Gary Mull design that Santarelli builds in small series for Negri nautica. “Perception” achieved a splendid second place with Desenzano Tonoli at the helm. Between 1976 and 1980 from the pencil of Ettore e come out several hulls that are produced in small series . We speak of the Quarter tonner Furia and the Mini tonner Flash small boats with very beautiful lines, which mark the evolution of Santarelli’s projects of this period . Ettore’s design is constantly evolving and the series of Modules 63 and 72 were born up to Module 90 the one of greater size that pursues, albeit in large, the design style introduced with the smaller hulls .
The Form 90 is a boat that wins the Mediterranean championship in 1980 and is one of the best combinations of speed and rating that Santarelli has ever made.In the same year Ettore builds the “Form 126 racing” and in parallel he makes “Farrneticante ” an innovative boat by Bruce Farr , a milestone in the evolution of hulls for the “Hundred”, which will be known worldwide as the “flying machines ” .
At this point appears on the horizon what will be Ettore’s new passion and that is the design and construction of monotypes which he considers the only possibility to make the crew’s talents count without having to resort to the disparity between the various projects as happens in the IOR classes . Here is the outline of the new frontier whose progenitor is “Asso99″.
Designed in 1982, “Ace 99” is a 9.90-meter boat overall, a true one-design made of fiberglass with a single mold where the hull, sails and appendages are strictly identical.
Among the most important Asso99 victories I remember the 1989 Centomiglia where “Fert” won with Luca Valerio at the helm and that of “Satanasso ” by Gaburri and Poli first overall at the 1991 “Barcolana ” . Not only that but it is worth mentioning “Spitz-Tecnoplast” of Larcher and Lievi who won the Hundred edition 1996, very prestigious results often ahead of much larger boats . In the various years on Asso99 regatta the flower of Italian and international sailing .
Interesting is the design of “Ines ” a module 123 free class that in 1986 the owner Fulvio Sangiacomo entrusts Bruno Fezzardi , which often dominates in the Gorla Trophy , a race more suited to his characteristics as a wind boat but does not win the “Cento “. Ettore enters to coordinate the structure of the Maxi Dolphin shipyard and builds in Sirmione “Carmen di Bellavista ” a maxi Ior still designed by New Zealander Bruce Farr.
After the very positive experience of “Ace 99,” Santarelli feels that there is room to build a smaller boat than his big brother, a boat that can give sensations of speed but with crew reduced to four members including two on the trapeze: is the Joker. In reality, the Joker is less fortunate than its big brother and has a career that is dazzling at first but of shorter duration .
Between 1991 and 1995 Ettore goes further and designs a series of brilliant, very fast boats that always answer to the name module in versions 105, 108, 123 and 93 .
The Modulo 105 is an innovative , sleek , performance boat ,with a small deckhouse and a large cockpit that immediately attracts the attention of enthusiasts. It is a boat equipped with four trapezoids with an overall length of m. 10,50. The best performing specimens of this series answer to the name of “Sarbacane “, “Ielg ” and ” Marchingenio ” and they obtain excellent results in regattas and especially “Ielg ” wins the most important offshore regattas of the Adriatic ( 500X2 and Rimini-Corfu-Rimini) in the seasons 1992-1993 . After two years of racing aboard “Sarbacane ” on Lake Neuchatel, Ettore informs his long-time client and friend Beate Siegfried that he has designed a new boat “to win.” A fast boat 10.54 long, with a displacement of 1500 kg of which 750 in ballast.. It is the “Module 108″ that dominates in 1994 the ” Bol d’or” famous regatta on Lake Geneva equivalent to our Centomiglia, where it finishes eighth overall, first among monohulls. In the same event Santarelli’s boats win with an “Ace 99” in the second class, while a “Joker” wins the third class . With these successes Santarelli’s notoriety abroad rises to the highest level. Created in 1995 the “Modulo 123” is the last hull to come out of Santarelli’s shipyard in Sirmione after Ettore’s death and sees the presence in the shipyard of Cristina Ettore’s daughter , who completes with the help of Luciano Corradi and Giuseppe Signori the realization of the boats still in the shipyard.
But it is the “Dolphin 81 ” a 1992 monotype that gives Santarelli a sort of consecration as it is a beautiful boat still in strong activity of which as many as 130 hulls have been built . The history of this boat has been exhaustively told by his friend Sandro Pellegrini in the book “Dolphin81- history of a boat” published by the Dolphin Class Association . “To the Joker- as Pellegrini writes- the sides are raised, but above all the trapezoids are removed and out comes Dolphin81 a quieter boat that can sail even at sea.” The first example, built in fiberglass , is launched on July 22, 1992 in Pilzone on Lake Iseo .. Del “Dolphin 81” viene allestita anche una versione “match race “ che a differenza della versione originaria è priva di sartie volanti in modo da essere più maneggevole e più adatta alle necessità di questo particolare tipo di regata “uno contro uno”. Questa versione viene utilizzata in occasione della “Cento cup” che vede al via per molte edizioni il meglio dei timonieri di Coppa America . Finalmente il “Dolphin81” sale alla ribalta delle regate internazionali. Surely Santarelli is one of the most complete figures present in the world of boating . It is in fact rare to find such an eclectic character who has been able to encapsulate such important qualities of sailor , sailmaker , designer and builder which Ettore was , combined with a great human richness .
Piero Vantini
