From the moment we founded our magazine, we have been supporting Liguria, with its seafaring history and traditions, it has always been the top region in Italy for the nautical industry. And so it was that chatting with a professional photographer friend of ours, we began “Boating in a Portrait”, a new project, that will accompany our readers over the next few months.

Liguria, without the need to mention Christopher Columbus, has some of the best shipyards, building skiffs, boats and ships based on the traditions of the old master craftsmen. Even Ucina Confindustria Nautica, not by accident, has its head offices in Genoa. Liguria is also the top region in Italy for number of boat mooring spaces, thanks to its nearly 25 thousand moorings for vessels of all sizes. Lastly, since 1960, the most important nautical expo in the Mediterranean has been held in the Ligurian capital, the Salone Nautico Internazionale di Genova [Genoa International Boat Show].

But as we know, it is people who make history, and it is for this reason that we thought it would be best to focus on the people, Ligurian or otherwise tied to our region, who have left their mark in the Italian boating industry or who have deep roots and connections with our sea. We have looked for people to represent all sectors within the nautical industry: from master craftsmen, to builders, managers, and industrialists as well as sailors, journalists, and divers.

For each of them, we will present a photographic portrait taken by Claudio Colombo, together with a brief interview with our journalist, Giuseppe Orrù, which will help us better know our protagonists, even with details on their private lives. Boating in a Portrait comes from the partnership between the well-known Genoese photographer, creator of the charity project, “Genova in un Ritratto [Genoa in a Portrait]”, a gallery of Genoese faces known or recognisable in their “environments”.

In this column, sadly, we were not able to show you some portraits we would have liked to have, to share with you the stories of people like Cesare Sangermani, Giovanni Castagnola, Mario Sciallino, Giulio Versari, Willy Persico, Nucci Novi Ceppellini and many others who have written the history of boating, but who we were not able to photograph because they left us too soon.

In this gallery, there are certainly going to be a number of people missing, who have title to be included and who, due to our skipping them or finding it difficult to contact them, we were not able to include, and for this, we apologise from the beginning. And now, we just have to wait for the first article in our column, in the hopes that it will excite you as much as it did us to discover more about these incredible people.

Fair winds to all.