The arrival at Imperia

In September 1998 a white sloop with fine lines casts her anchor in the port of Imperia. She has been seen arriving from the West from France, perhaps even from Gibraltar; she bears an exotic, even strange name: VARUNA. The old maritime town has just hit the front page headlines thanks to the Classic and Vintage Yacht Challenge, of which the first was in 1986 But the economy of the port still lives from more pragmatic coastal trades: oil, corn, fishing; while the classic yachting scene has still a way to go. The cargo sailors and the fishermen were not therefore too impressed by that long counter, by the elegant forward rake, by the little, pretty doghouse. For them, probably, the one that moored at the long pier of Porto Maurizio is just another old boat, a bit shabby, handled by a lovely adventurer, perhaps both on the look-out for their last port. And this looks like a reality, as the boat passes from hand to hand, receives just some survival work, as the funds for serious work to the frames and beams are lacking. Instead, the insult of hundreds of pounds of sawdust and polyester resin attached to the keel in former times, and of the paint removed from the teak planks, which were then just left bare. And it is in this way that the people of Imperia have seen her for ten long years on the cradle, surrounded by all sorts of wreckage, weeds and rubbish in the post industrial skyline of the ex-iron foundry. Then on a bright May morning of the year 2000, they realized that one element was missing from the familiar landscape: VARUNA was no longer in her place.......