From Friday, October 2 until Sunday the 11th, the Mascalzone Latino social project, a sailing school aimed at bringing the unluckiest kids of the Naples suburbs into contact with sailing and sea life, was sad the 47th edition of the Trieste Barcolana with a photographic exhibition that compared its activities with a similar project in Rio de Janeiro, the Projeto Grael.
The exhibition, entitled “Sailing for Life: the sea and sailing to redeem the young”, with photographs by Fabiano Avancini, a photo reporter who knows the suffering and the subtleties of the world’s conflicts, immortalise the students of both schools and brought out the differences and the similarities that marked the efforts of the two surprisingly similar bodies. They are two schools of sailing and life belonging to distant worlds but very similar in wanting to show the kids, and futures sailors, that through sailing their horizons can be much broader than those that their original environments can offer.
Guaranteeing the success of these enterprises are on both sides two great men and two great sailors: Vincenzo Onorato on the one hand, a successful Neapolitan sailor also at the helm of his yachts and in the management of two America’s Cup campaigns, and Torben Grael, one of the greatest athletes Brazil has ever had: two golds, a silver and two bronzes at the Olympics, plus victory in a round the world race and in the 2000 Louis Vuitton Cup. They are, though geographically at the Antipodes, one in Naples and the other in Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro, two men with a big heart.
It was not the first recent participation for Mascalzone Latino in a social project at the Trieste Barcolana: just three years ago Vincenzo Onorato and some historic members of the team had sailed in the Gulf of Trieste fulfilling a really special mission. It was a television production of a documentary film “The force of the wind”, broadcast on La7, which told the story of eight kids affected by the Down syndrome who, for more than a year, trained hard, overcoming the limits and those of a difficult and demanding boat like La Poste, sailed by Eric Tabarly in the 1993 Whitbread, thanks to the help of an expert and generous team, that of Mascalzone Latino.
The strong links between the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School and Trieste go back to its origins, as Vincenzo Onorato remembers: “for me it is always interesting and curious to remember that the idea of the important project of the Sailing School was born when I understood that the Trieste area was a breeding ground of champions in Naples was not. After an evening in Muggia many years ago and from what many Trieste sailors who raced and still raced with me told me, I saw that sailing in the capital of Friuli is taught to everyone while in Naples it is still a club phenomenon, an elite thing. Our aim is for this discipline to be practised by young people without discrimination, above all by those who live in a situation of great social problems. Through the sea we want to get the kids off the streets and turn them into sailing champions. This is why we have created in Naples a sailing school open to anyone.”
Projeto Grael has been active for 15 years and, like the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School, structures its courses as full immersion after-school activities. It also offers professional training in carpentry, electronics, basic health care, prevention and nutrition.
The Mascalzone Latino Sailing School, formed in 2007, is completely free for students and from 2010 moved inside the headquarters of the Italian Navy in Via Ammiraglio Acton 1, in Naples, a base that also hosts the Neapolitan sailing section of the Navy. The Mascalzone Latino Sailing School collaborates with schools and associations in the Neapolitan area and every year promotes sailing and offers experience to hundreds of students who otherwise would not have been able to do it, selecting the most motivated and talented for its increasingly numerous racing team of boys and girls from elementary to upper schools, mainly in the Optimist, Laser and 420 classes.
The exhibition was held in the BarcolanaLab, the teaching laboratory in collaboration with the Società Velica di Barcola e Grignano, Civico Museo del Mare, Municipality and Province of Trieste in the Magazzino delle Idee in Corso Cavour in Trieste.
The Mascalzone Latino Sailing School is grateful for the support of Global Marine Supplies Spa, a point of reference in general Marine supplies in the Mediterranean, operating in the ports of Genoa and Civitavecchia, for their generous contribution to the exhibition.