Our passion , our oringines , the story of a myth
Our passion , our oringines , the story of a myth
Today on our logbook we talk , about our inspiration of the person who gave us the passion for this work, our grandfather Carmine Ascanio known as MIMì , also the name of some of our boats , we bring you an atricle written by Silvia Buchner daughter of the famous archaeologist Giorgio buchner who lived part of his life here in ischia famous for his studies on the prehistoric peopling of the islandof Ischia and the foundation of the colonies of Magna Graecia, with particular regard to Pithecusa.
RIVA, ROLLS-ROYCE OF THE ISCHIA SEA.
The story of an Italian excellence, the Riva motorboats, designed by Carlo Riva in his company on Lake Iseo, and which have become an object of desire throughout the world for their beauty and elegance, is also a bit of an Ischian story. These relatively small motorboats-the Aquarama is just over 8 meters long-were all mahogany, with leather interiors, fast yet elegant.
However, after spending a day between water-skiing and shore-skiing in fashionable resorts, from Ischia to the French Riviera or Capri, the lucky owners did not sleep on board as is the case today with luxury yachts (true floating dwellings): they would disembark at hotels where comfort was absolute, the Albergo della Regina Isabella in Lacco Ameno, the Hermitage in Monte Carlo, the Sporting Club in St Tropez… And on board remained the sailor, who was much more than a “sailor,” he was the person to whom one entrusted one’s jewel, who steered it, after the day at sea washed it thoroughly with fresh water and dried it with buckskin to protect the delicate wooden structure, who slept on the Riva when in port and transferred it to dock for the winter.
One of these men of the sea, spectators and co-protagonists of the golden world that arose with the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s was Carmine Ascanio. Born in Lacco into a family of fishermen, he knew how to seize the opportunity that came with the island’s tourist success and, with an entrepreneurial spirit, bought with a group of colleagues many Rivas, first used, then new. After a few years, the Regina Isabella’s dock was all occupied by the magnificent hulls whose wood shone in the sun, and Mimì Ascanio still remembers when engineer Carlo Riva himself on vacation here, amazed at the sight of so many of his creations exclaimed, “Montecarlo has moved to Ischia?!”
So many stars have boarded his Rivas moored in the bay of Lacco Ameno, from Alain Delon, Visconti’s guest at the Colombaia, to the American actor Victor Mature to the famous South African heart surgeon Christian Barnard, and then Ira Furstenberg, Ugo Tognazzi, Walter Chiari, Paolo Villaggio, and in more recent times Valeria Marini and many guests of Pascal Vicedomini’s Global Film and Music fest. Even, when news came of a coup in Afghanistan it was Mimì Ascanio who rushed King Mohamed Zahir Shah back to the mainland, of course aboard a riva
