La Spina. A 20th-century yacht. The story of the first italian 12-metre international-rule yacht

In the first months of 1929 at Varazze near Genoa a sailing boat was launched, designed to participate - the first in Italy - in the sports competitions of the International rule 12-metre class. It was La Spina, ordered by Franco Spinola, an aristocratic Genoese and Navy admiral. Owing to circumstances La Spina never had any competitors in the Mediterranean. It was then converted into an extremely elegant cruising yacht with which in 1938 its new owner, the noble Bolognese Gian Augusto Salina Amorini Bolognini, called at the loveliest Italian ports, hosting on board the exclusive high society of the late 1930s. In the second half of the twentieth century after changing hands La Spina, thanks to a Neapolitan ship owner who found it abandoned in the port of Malaga, underwent a flawless philological restoration worthy of an authentic period masterpiece.