At sea!

September 13th, 2010.

A boat sliding into the sea is the feeling of a triumph, and the pain of a separation.

The launch is the accomplishment of an idea, turned into a project, that through time, work, disappointments and satisfaction becomes a boat, going at sea.

From this point on, the gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro"'s history is not drawn anymore on a project from 1919.

Ahead of her bow is the Sea, adventures, perils, the future.

But, that's another story.

The rigging

One of the most fascinating things in a sailing boat is, until sails are unfurled, the apparently tangling amount of lines and ropes, each of them with a defined duty, perfectly symmetric around the mast.
Position and length of standing or running rigging must be accurately studied and tested to balance safety, performances, manoeuvrability and hundreds more factors that can only be tested under sailing.
Fulvio Cafiero and his friends of the "Circolo Nautico Marina di Alimuri", that will train the crew of the lateen rigged gozzo “Santa Maria del Lauro”, assist Michele Cafiero in the rigging work. The splices, simple joints of ropes of unparalleled elegance, are winded, the mast is erected in the highest point of the cave, the bowsprit is connected to the prow.
When this task will be accomplished, the boat will be ready for the launch, at last.

The Yacht Club "Marina di Alimuri"

Back in 1983, sailing was a distant memory at Marina di Alimuri.
Wooden oars boats and “sandolini", traditional canoes, were slowly giving place to fiberglass ones, the last, ignored “Cap Horniers” met by the sea overlooking the sunset, telling each other memories that would never share with anyone else.
But meanwhile, an engineer collected relics from the golden age of local sailorship, Italy learned of America’s Cup while United States lost it, and a regional tv’s documentary rediscovered the history of the tall ships built at Marina di Alimuri.
In that year, and in that climate, a group of young men, aided by the occasional advises of old seamen, gathered their sailing boats and founded a yacht club, right on the beach where once the tall ships masts were raised.
It was the start of an era: tiny wooden dinghies, to that point considered ready for the fireplace, were proudly restored and painted, old “gozzi” owners found masts and yards for lateen sail in their attics, and young boys showed up asking to be taught “how to sail”.

A few years later, almost as a joke, the club, now affiliated to the F.I.V., summoned five or six of the oldest boats, some with improvised sails, and set up an almost windless “regatta” of “historical boats”. Since the trophy they ran for was a painting in the style of an illustrious local XIXth century marine painter, the race was dedicated to his name. It was the “Ist Eduardo de Martino Trophy”, that in 2010 will reach the twenty-second edition, and has become one of the most crowded and well known classic sailing boat races of Italy, and it’s the only sailing event in Sorrentine waters.
Fulvio Cafiero, founder, president and soul of the “Circolo Nautico Marina di Alimuri”, that in time relocated to the nearby Marina di Meta, will select and train the lateen sail gozzo “Santa Maria del Lauro”’s crew. Together with the associates of the club, he will help Michele to rig and man a lateen sail boat, at the Marina di Alimuri.

The Rudder

"Boat with no rudder, can hold no course", old sea men said to explain the need for authority.

And the rudder is indeed the one element in a boat that could nullify any of her good features, or favourable conditions if unproperly made or handled.

Either under sails or oars, a well designed rudder can provide the boat with the right compromise of manouvrability and directional stability.
Michele Cafiero has chosen two different shapes for his lateen sail gozzo's rudder, and so he makes two different ones, the first wide and deep, the other shorter, for different settings. A large surface, and a deep draught of the rudder's blade, assures a quick response in the tacks, at the cost of a heavier weight and loss of speed, a light and shorter blade makes the boat harder to handle, but faster.
But, as reminded by the old seamen's saying, even more than the rudder shape, the boat's behavior is decided by the helmsman's ability. So after cutting and painting the rudder, and before rigging the "Santa Maria del Lauro", it is time to find and train a crew.

Giovanni Caputo

"To rig" a boat, that is to say to provide her with sails and rigs, is a difficult and delicate task. Small variations, insignificant to an uninitiated's eyes, can set great differences in terms of performances, reliability or safety. The position of the mast, length and angle of attach of the "standing rigging", holding the mast steady, and of the "running rigging", maneuvering the sails, are the product of centuries old, mostly empiric experiences, that once were passed from father to son, and now are kept by the "rigger", the man who "tunes up" the boat. The English word is the most used nowadays, because the job of "attrezzatore", though very much sought-after in the sailing world, has almost disappeared in Italy.
But Giovanni Caputo, a man who made a job of his passion, and an art of his job, is one of the very last classic boats "attrezzatori", specialised in lateen rigs. One day he came to visit the Cafiero's boatyard, to meet for the first time the gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro", bringing in a pocket a surprise gift to Mast'Antonio, Michele and the boat: one of his blocks in wood and copper, custom made according to the size and shape required by every rigging need. And during an extraordinary encounter of surviving skills and experiences, a cooperation is born between the carpenters and the rigger, who will donate to the lateen sailed gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro" all the blocks she will need to be rigged with a lateen sail.

The mast and the yardarm

The lateen sail rig has been typical in the Mediterranean until a few decades ago.

In spite of what has been mantained for a long time, its origin is undoubtedly Mediterranean, and the "reversed" etimology from "vela alla trina" is now known to be wrong: depictions of lateen rigged ships dating back to the I century BCE have been found in Antony and Cleopatra's Alexandria. Its diffusion and improvement in the Arab world and into Indian Ocean saw it described at the "latine" sail, that is to say the sail of the former roman Mare Nostrum peoples.
But the fishing gozzi of the Bay of Naples used the lateen sail only in special conditions. It was high, heavy and cumbersome during the rowing. The most used sail was a fore and aft sail, the sprit sail, a tiny, less proficient one, but very easy to maneuver and taking little room when folded.
And right like the original gozzo, the new "Santa Maria del Lauro" will sport both riggings.
Michele has chosen to have a very long and flexible yardarm, in white pine wood, and a tall mast, still in pine wood, to take more wind.
From two square planks, they saw corners off, then taper both ends, and then, by plane and sandpaper work, corners are refined until the shape is almost circular.
They will define the shape of the sail, and the speed of the boat.

The mast-step

It is easy to imagine how a sail can move a boat: the wind blows on its surface, and since the sail is tied to the mast, that is connected to the boat, the boat goes. But to convey the wind energy to the boat's hull, and to do it in a proficient manner, is a serious problem to face, to avoid that mast and sail fly away while the boat stay still.
So the mast cannot be a simple pole, but a whole system due to resist strains while absorbing shocks potentially harmful to the hull. The first element of this system that Michele Cafiero assembles on his gozzo "S. Maria del Lauro" is the mast step.
It is a wooden pedestal that is tightly connected to the hull, with a hole where the bottom of the mast will fit in, after passing through another hole in the mast-hole, a plank placed at deck height. The position of the mast-step, that is to say the position of the mast, will affect the manoeuvrability of the boat, her trim during different reaches, and the centre of maneuver itself.
The lateen sail was seldom used by Alimuri fishermen: the Bay of Naples' winds are whimsical and changing, but who knew how to exploit them had a remarkable aid to the hardships of rowing. To save room, the mast was close to the bow, even if this arrangement made the boat quite unbalanced and hard to be kept in course, under sailing. With a concession to evolution, the lateen sail mast of Mast'Antonio's and Michele Cafiero's gozzo will stand in a more central position than the original 1919 boat.

The coaming

Classic boats' charm mostly lies in the finest details. Tiny particulars grant the fair refinement peculiar to the ancient seafaring.
But only real seamen can spot in each one of these details the practical utility of fittings making life and work at sea easier, and a boat safer.
The coaming, on the version of the sorrentine "gozzo" traditionally built at Marina di Alimuri, is a simple wooden rail, strong enough to resist the harshness of daily work at sea, but with no structural function, built around the cockpit, where nets or payloads, and "if God is pleased", taken fish, were carried. Its goal is to prevent the seawater coming from sprays over the sheerstrake or from nets and ropes just weighed on board, to flow into the hull, filling the bilge and loading the boat. The characteristic shape of the caulked deck, and the very rolling of the boat, make the water flow along the coaming and to the sides, where scuppers carved into the sheerstrake let the water out.
By now Mast'Antonio and Michele Cafiero's job is focused on small details of their lateen gozzo. The "Santa Maria del Lauro", caulked and painted, is an accomplished boat. But she's not ready to sail yet, and Mast'Antonio, used to complete a new boat in little more than six months, and now must content himself to work during Michele,'s free time, champs at the bit. The sea is there, two steps away.

Plaster and Paint

When the caulking is completed, the gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro" looks like a perfect wooden sculpture. Unfortunately, the sea has no mercy for wooden manufacts: in a few months, salt water and sun light can destroy them. And indeed, a striking difference with the boats from the northern seas is that the Mediterranean boats are painted in bright and individual colors.
It has oftne pointed that where the shore rock is limestone, fishermen houses were whitened with lime, while on tuff rock shores houses were bright, different colored, easily spotted one by one from the sea. At Meta, the two marinas, the one said "of Meta", or of the Purgatory, which ruins stand below the tuff cliff, and Marina di Alimuri, wedged between the limestone mountain and the tuff cliff of Sorrento's plain, showed both cases.
But all the boats were bright colored, decorated with apotropaic and religious symbols.
Mast'Antonio recalls that his grandfather's gozzo, the original 1919 "Santa Maria del Lauro" was bright red, a well visible color at sea. Michele little daughters decide the colors of the "frisa".
After the hard work and sharp attentions dedicated to the wooden hull, painting is almost boring, for the carpenters...

Caulking

The caulking is the millennia old tecnique that makes the difference between a wardrobe and a boat: both are made out of wooden parts, connected to serve a purpose and to resist some loads. But if they are thrown into the water, the wardrobe content is soaked, the boat's one is dry.
Even the Bible, when Noah got instructions to build his boat, mentions generically an "ark" (i.e. "a box"), but it dwells on the way to make it waterproof. And the same happens when it describes the basket which is entrusted with baby Moses' destiny.

It's a mostly forgotten art.
When a gentleman, looking for "Master caulkers", is addressed to the boatyard cave, Mast'Antonio replies firmly, giving him an address in upper Meta: the cemetery address..

But Mast'Antonio Cafiero is a modest man. Even if he's a boatwright "only", and not a caulker, he is perfectly able to execute the caulking on his own "gozzo", using the traditional tools inherited by his master.
They are a series of different chisels, apparently almost undistinguishable from each other, but to be used progressively, and a large peculiar mallet. The first chisels are used to enlarge the seams (the spaces between a plank and the other). Cotton weaves (or oakum on larger boats or ships) are then inserted into the seams, and forced in position with the next chisels, blunter than the others, effectively sealing them. On larger boats, like on the "gozzo"'s deck, seams are sealed melting pitch on the oakum or cotton, then sanding it to level it. But on a 7 meters long gozzo , parts are small and deformations due to strains are not significant compared to dimensions of seams, so plaster and paint are enough to complete the caulking.

The closing one

The last piece of the planking, the one closing the hull, is special. Its position on the hull is different from a boatyard and another, and different ways coexist.
In the Cafiero boatyard, on the gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro", this plank is the third one from the keel.
It is narrower than the others: while the edges of the other planks are cut to be perpendicular to the ribs in the very point of connection with them, following the rules of the "righella dei cardamoni", the edges of the so called "chiudente" ("the closing one"), and the ones of the contiguous planks, are cut to give it a wedge like section.
This shape is easily inserted between the other planks, avoiding any forcing, but at the same time allowing the "chiudente" to act as a wedge during torsions and bendings of the hull.
This plank too is wet and warmed up at fire, and then nailed to the ribs. And when Michele's last hammer bangs arrange it into its position, the planking on the ribs has become a boat's hull...

Water, Wood and Fire

Along her sides, the shape of the hull of a gozzo is so curve that it exceeds the natural flexibility of a wooden plank. To force it into place can cause breaks or, even worse, sudden failure under stress.

Then an archaic metod is employed, the same for thousands years, probably since Phoenicians and Achaeans built the first wooden ships.

Antonio, the young but experienced apprentice, rubs slowly and carefully the plank with a wet rag, while Michele Cafiero lights a fire with cut out chips in an iron bucket.
The wood of the plank, soaked in water, becomes more flexible. But it is not enough, yet. With extreme caution, Michele put the plank into the flames, and turns it up. The water soaks into the fibers of the wood, warms up and warms the already softened fibers. If the plank seems about to dry up, Michele pulls it out of the fire and Antonio soaks it again, in a game of balance between water and fire. When the wood looks like it's exuding steam, Michele hurries up to Mast'Antonio, waiting for him by the hull of the gozzo: with a few, quick but deliberate moves, they fasten the first plank, the "garboard", still steaming, on the ribs, and enforce it in place against the side of the keel with wedges and clamps. They drill holes, nail it and, when the plank will dry up its fibers will stay deformed into the position enforced at high temperature, but not weakened. Later, carpenters and apprentice will repeat the whole operation with the second plank.

Struts away!

Since the keel has been connected to the prow and the stern, the boay has been growing on it. And since the ribs have been connected to the keel, the skeleton of the gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro" has been firmly locked with struts in a stand up position, for an easy construction work.
Now, the moment has come to put up the planking, and after the first planks, the hull must be leaned on one side to set the planks from the keel.

In Michele's simple, deliberate moves, taking the cross off the bow to set it free from the struts, there's the awareness that this is the end of the beginning: from now on, they are not going to work anymore on a wooden frame locked in a boatyard, they are going to finish a boat.

The deck

The deck, the top of a boat, is roof, floor and enclosing of the waterproof hull's shell.
On fishing "gozzi", like the ones from Marina di Alimuri, it was only a partial coverage, to protect the inside of the hull from the breaking waves , and to provide a step for crew members working on the bow, or maneuvering the lateen sail.
In modern boats the deck is composed of pre-built panels, in plywood listed with strips of teak wood, imitating the seams, like the ones on which generations of ships boys have worn mops, knees and elbows.
Of course, the "Santa Maria del Lauro"'s deck will be built in the traditional way: over the beams, the robust seams of the deck will be able not only to bear the weight of a walking crew, but they will be forced into the bending of the hull, to improve the decks watertight quality, and to be part of the hull's working structure.
Mast'Antonio's experience with the clamps and the wood's reactions to bending drive the seams into their place, and Michele's accuracy fasten them, and refines the work. In a few hours, the gozzo's deck is ready to be caulked. But for this, it is not the moment yet.

"We came from Malta..."

When I was a kid, family tales seemed to belong to an ancient era. I did not listen much, I was more intrigued by my father's job, and more interested in banging hammers.
Once grown up, and become a carpenter, from those family stories heard as background chatting, I recalled some talks making sense.
The Cafieros were silk merchants, living in Malta. But they still owned buildings in Meta.
After the fall of Napoleon, they chose to leave the island, and to return to their native land.
Probably, Malta under British custom was not a convenient base anymore.
Several years later, they had abandoned the silk business, and had become carpenters and shipwright, like my father and me: towards the half of the XIXth century, Sorrento's mulberries were all but supplanted by orange grooves, and this was the end of local silk production, or maybe, orange were just more proitable cultures. Rebuilding a classic boat (with mulberry wooden framework), child's memories must help the reconstruction of family history.
The sculpture on the prow of the wooden gozzo boat we are building, the "St. Maria del Lauro", on the blueprint of my father's grandpa's boat, will be dedicated to the Madonna from which she was named. But in the inside of it, the builder symbol will be a cross of Malta.

Knees and gunwale

Beams and thwarts, connected to the hull to enclose the half shell against the external forces, are reinforced by typical structures. The "knees" extend the connection between two parts, and allow them to distribute the charge on a larger surface of wood, minimizing the chance of sudden breaks.

With the knees, the structural framework of the hull is nearly completed, and then it is time for the construction of the deck, that will make the boat a livable place. A typical characteristic of Alimuri's "gozzi", like all Sorrento's ones, was the so called "frisa", the gunwale, a thick strip of wood with no other structural function than to rise the board, and to endure the endless attrition of nets and loads paid out or weighed.
Close to the prow, the gunwale is higher and thinner, turning into the "falchetta", held by stanchions, to act as a breakwater, and suddenly it ends up with the "schiocca", a strong transversal board that will hold the bowsprit, and more, will act as the first rib, absorbing the crashes of the waves into the bow. The "schiocca", as all the boats since Greeks and Phoenicians times, was decorated with images of tutelary deities: the one on the gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro" will be the same.

Beams and thwarts

The framework is the shell shaping the hull to displace an amount of water weighing more than its own weight, allowing thus the boat to stay afloat.

In fact, it is an half shell, since the upper half of the hull is open, of course, being unnecessary to buoyance.

This is not completely true: if a boat is supposed to stay at sea for a long time, it is not reasonably probable that the sea will stay calm, and the waves will not rise inboard.
Accordingly, a boat due to resist bad weather and rough sea is completed with a deck, that is to say a watertight cover to close the hull. The lateen "gozzo" "Santa Maria del Lauro", like all 'gozzi' from Marina di Alimuri, was a fishing boat: she was not conceived to face sea storms, nor to sail off shore, but being a working boat, a tool for subsistence and economic survival, she would be much more competitive if able to ride the typical short and broken high waves from North West wind, the Bay of Naples' "Maestrale".
A typical feature of this side of the bay is that it is a lee shore: when the dominant wind blows, the sea gets rough. So the fishing "gozzi" had a tall prow to break the crest of waves and a rounded stern to avoid sinking in the through. More, they sported a short deck on the bow, with extensions along the boards, to drain overboard the sea water sprays. And more importantly, behind the beams supporting the deck, they had three strong thwarts, connecting the sides to avoid deformations and to absorb the constant bumping of waves. Mast'Antonio Cafiero and his son Michele have cut beams and thwarts in solid elmwood, and connect them with impressive precision between the sheer strake and the dead beam. Their XXIst century wooden gozzo is a step closer to the sea.

One year later...

On January 24th 2008 the fist photo was shot on the plan of the lateen gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro", just "tracked", and Mast'Antonio and Michele Cafiero's adventure began.

It sounds absurd, but only a few really believed that a boatwright and is son, also a boatwright, could really build an out of time boat.

366 days later, the boat, worked on in free time, is not finished yet, but Michele has won his first challenge: with Mast'Antonio's invaluable help and guidance he has prolonged for one year more the centuries long tradition of Marina di Alimuri's boat builders, turning it into a chance for revival.

Angelo Esposito, the young and passionate naval engineer that encouraged them, shot the photo on the right, where father and son are with the model of the boat, made by a friend of theirs along the original blue print. The boat did not exist yet, but she did in their eyes, as an indifferent promise.





Now the very same model is on the bow of the boat, the boat that one year ago was still enclosed in the wood.

The wish, after one hard working year, is that the lateen gozzo "Santa Maria del Lauro" has a future as a living boat in a living Marina di Alimuri.

The sheer strake

Now that ribs have been connected to the keel, shaped up by temporary frames, it is possible to begin to lay out the planking. In wooden boats it is not only a (desirably) watertight skin covering the framework of the boat, but a lifting structure itself. The first plank, called "sheer strake" in English, and called "cinta", "belt" in our dialect, is paramount to distribute stresses all along the boat, and to make it stronger, it works with an opposite inboard plank called "dead beam", "dormiente".

Soon after the cut, the mahogany plank is submerged for a few hours in warm water. Then, still wet, the stern end of it is connected with clamps to the stern, and then, rib by rib, it is bent and clamped along the side of the boat, thanks to elasticity due to the immersion in warm water. At this point, after checking that ribs are in the right position, the plank is drilled and nailed to them, and becomes the "cinta", the sheer strake of the boat. The same operation is performed on the opposite side of the boat, checking accurately for symmetry, and the two sheer strakes join to the stem.

Shape up

Once connected to the keel, the ribs are only fastened by nails: that is to say, they are not really fastened, they can rotate or loosen, anc cannot play any structural role. Now a whole set of structures will be build around them, to connect them to each other and to the keel, in a way that no part will have to endure any stress only by itself.

Meanwhile, they must be locked in position, shaping up the hull as depicted in the 1919 blueprint.
By accurate measurements, the waterlines are transferred from the "garbi" to the ribs, and the latters are locked to long wooden strips, then nailed into them.
The rigid and symmetric skeleton has to be locked in a perfectly leveled position, according to the cave slope, with its vertical axis exactly plum-lined, propped up and fastened. In that position, it will be possible to work freely to remaining frames, and to the planking.