n my formative years I was taken to the cinema to watch the Dead Poets Society featuring the late Robin Williams. The film had a profound effect on me not least because I was told it was a comedy and emerged from the cinema in tears. In addition to the film leaving me with a lingering desire to smoke a pipe, read more Byron and stand on my desk at school, I was struck by one line from the film in which Williams asks his pupils why we write poetry. ‘To communicate’ one pupil chirps up. ‘No!’ Williams replies “It’s to woo women.” Now that is a line that perhaps hasn’t aged so well but it occurred to me as I was out sailing the Italia 11.98. No, I wasn’t wooing anyone but I imagine if you posed the question of why naval architects design yachts, the answer would be similarly straightforward. It’s not because they want to design high volume, comfortable cruising yachts. No, they would say they want to design beautiful, fast yachts. Which brings me to the Italia 11.98. If you were an aspiring naval architect, this is the sort of yacht you’d dream of designing
