50 times Five Hundred. The Charm of Offshore Sailing.

The volume “50 times Cinquecento” written by Silvia Traunero and Adriana Quarti has been published by the Nutrimenti Mare publishing house.

The Cinquecento, originally known as 500×2, was launched at the Circolo Nautico Santa Margherita in Caorle on June 21, 1975, with an apparently simple formula: a 500 nautical mile race for just two sailors aboard boats with a sealed engine. The alchemy of the Adriatic, with its variability, has turned this into a cutting-edge challenge that is highly technical and difficult to interpret.

The route, unchanged since the first edition, sees competitors starting from the coastline in front of Caorle (Venice), then passing the island of Sansego (Susak) in Croatian waters, and then heading down to the Tremiti Islands archipelago, which must be circumnavigated, before returning to Caorle in about 4-5 days of non-stop racing.

In this documentary book, the two Venetian journalists have given ample space to the testimonies of the protagonists: alongside the account of each year, there are amarcord, stories obtained through interviews, excerpts from the logbook, or writings by the skippers specifically for the book.

The result is a 288-page volume that also includes about 200 images, some excerpts from nautical magazines, and many pieces of information and anecdotes that trace the history of sailing and offshore yachting over the past fifty years. The volume is completed by a detailed list of all participants, boats, and skippers for each year.

The introduction to “50 times Cinquecento” was written by journalist Giulio Guazzini.