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The Board of Arctic Sail Expeditions - Italy

 

Nanni.jpg

The commander

Nanni Acquarone

Coming from a family with Ligurian origins, born in 1942, son of the famous Turin Choreographer and Classical Dance Teacher Sara Acquarone, he completed all his studies in Turin at the Social Institute of the Jesuit Fathers, taking the classical high school diploma at the age of 17 in 1960. He graduated engineer at the age of 22 in 1965 at the Turin Polytechnic and joined IBM where he remained until 1995, first in Turin, then in Milan and Copenhagen, Denmark.

He is married with three children and numerous grandchildren.

An excellent skier, immediately after having interrupted his racing career due to a serious accident, he discovered sailing in 1963.

He begins to sail, first in the Mediterranean and since 1967 always as a skipper, then since 1983 in the Baltic and the English Channel.

Since 1995 he has been organizing expeditions and plowing all oceans, visiting Portugal, Bay of Biscay, Holland, Canary Islands, Madeira, Cape Verde Islands, Azores, Patagonia, Falkland Islands, Cape Horn, Scotland, Ireland, Thailand, Malaysia, New Scotland, New England, British Columbia, Baja California and Fiji Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Jan Mayen and Norway.

Since 2008 he has been sailing with Best Explorer to the Svalbard Islands in the Arctic among the ice, reaching over 80 ° north.

He led Best Explorer along the Northwest Passage and then into the Pacific for six years, descending the American coasts to Mexico, visiting the Galapagos, the Marquesas, the Tuamotu, Tahiti and the Society Islands, the Cook, Niuè, Tonga , Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Western Australia, Indonesian Papua Barat, Celebes, Sulawesi, the Philippines up to Japan, accumulating an experience of nearly 100,000 miles.

He has published the book: "Best Explorer - From the Ligurian Sea to the Arctic Ocean", Il Franente Editions and the book "Without a compass in the ice", Mursia Editions.

 

 

Nicoletta Martini

Romagnola di Cesenatico, born in 1958. Chemical engineer.
Extensive deep sea sailing experience in the Mediterranean. Ocean navigation in tidal areas (Brittany, Scotland, New England, Nova Scotia), Denmark, Sea of Cortez, Malaysia, Fiji. In 2005 about 2000 miles of Pacific "two" aboard a 32 'UFO. Navigate with Nanni since 2000 in all Best Explorer navigations

 

Filippo Mennuni

Sailor and navigator, he has traveled a large number of maritime routes in command of sailing boats of all kinds. In thirty years, with over 190,000 miles traveled, he has sailed from the North Atlantic to Tierra del Fuego, from the Mediterranean to the Antilles, from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific. He collaborated with important shipyards and architects for the construction and reffitting of famous sailing ships, including the 3-masted "la Boudeuse", with which he then reached the Amazon and explored some great South American rivers.
Collaborator of various television stations, he organized and supported various scientific and cultural expeditions. In the past he has raced offshore and transoceanic regattas obtaining excellent results.
"I have a predilection for navigating in cold seas and with little traveled routes" - he says - "in which nature really puts you to the test and where the qualities of the person, the resistance, the spirit of adaptation, the technical competence and the management of one's morale. I like to reach places where there have been few people before me or none at all. I believe that going to sea is today the last possible adventure for a normal man. I love the night in the ocean, his perfume and its noise. We find ourselves face to face with ourselves, without compromise .. "

Salvatore Magri

I have always followed the smell of the sea.
Forever.
From June 28, 1956.
In Naples, my mother tells me, the civic hospital has large windows and so she would put the cradle close as if you could really see the sea.
I didn't see it but I still remember the smell. Which was that of my father, a sailor from before his father, who couldn't look at four pieces of wood without imagining a boat.
So I grow up and emigrate to Rome, which is not really on the sea and the search becomes more difficult but I insist, now of course, without command, always, even when in a suit and tie I discuss payment systems, perhaps in European conferences, perhaps in English.
A well-dressed man who speaks English and thinks of the smell of the sea. Which was the onion mixture of Pupa's spaghetti, on the Grande Zot, and everyone, Giancarlo, Pupa, me swinging, nose in the air, with my mouth dirty with sauce.
The smell that I chase everywhere, a hundred times in the Aegean and the Ionian, to imitate Ulysses, and further along the Dalmatian coasts, and after the Atlantic crossing, Canada, the Caribbean and again Panama and the Canal, everywhere smell lead me.
I tried to betray it at times, I love the mountains, climbing routes in summer and winter skiing, but it has another scent, then in the air with the paraglider to breathe strongly and in motion to look for the wind, but they are adventures of a moment, the heart is always there, at the sea.
When someone says "I like the sea", it seems like this, anything, like many: I like chocolate, I like horses, I like the sea ... instead, those who listen to you should pay more attention to that that you are confiding in him, that it is a precise way of seeing life, men, the world from afar with respect, embracing them with your eyes before touching them with your hands, approaching them gracefully like a caress, full of understanding and pietas for the whole humanity, a travel companion that consumes all roads. "I like the sea" is to build the journey with skill and sagacity, measuring and scrutinizing the cards, setting a strategy of maneuvers right at the moment.
"I like the sea" is building a journey without being the master of the journey and you know that the wind does not think of you and neither does the water and they could easily decide to do something different from always ... and I know it but I continue to look for the port ... this time in the ice.

Pietro Cocco

Sailing drifts, in adolescence.
Cabin cruiser of 8 meters for 20 years with frequent solo navigation in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Based in the Ponza islands.
"Ecòle de mer" of the Glénans Italia in the 80s with winter sailing in Istria and Dalmatia.
Sailing with 10 meters in Croatia.
After a "stop" which lasted too long (12 years !!) for various reasons, acquaintance with Nanni.
Approach to Best explorer in Tromsø, in the "magic" of the great North.
I don't think I'll break away from them that easily !!!

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