Travel Journal
An international class Dragon, fresh from the Grand Prix d’Italia Dragon Cup at the Yacht Club Sanremo, loaded on Sunday morning and delivered to Antwerp on Monday. Next stop: the European Championship in Helsinki. We take care of the road — the sea is left to the ship.
The journey
The Grand Prix d’Italia Dragon Cup concluded on Saturday afternoon at the Yacht Club Sanremo. Forty-nine crews from fifteen countries, four days of racing in the Ligurian gulf — and for one of these Dragons, the schedule allowed no downtime. The boat had to reach the port of Antwerp by the end of the week to be loaded onto a cargo ship bound for Helsinki, where the Dragon class European Championship would be held at the end of June.
On Sunday morning we were at the quay before eight. The hull had already been unstepped the previous evening by the crew: a Dragon measures just under nine metres in length and weighs around 1,700 kilograms dry — dimensions that require a trailer with a dedicated cradle and a suitable towing vehicle. We positioned the boat on the trailer’s centreline, secured the hull with cradle straps, and checked that the lifting keel was locked in the transport position.
The route follows the classic western motorway spine: A10 to Genova, then A7 towards Milano, A4 to Torino and from there the Mont Blanc motorway and the Belgian network. The passage through France demands attention to clearance height: with the boat on the trailer the overall height exceeds three and a half metres, so no reduced-profile tunnels on the old Aurelia. The Franco-Belgian border, at night, is the quietest stretch of the entire journey.
By Monday morning the boat was in the yard of the Antwerp maritime terminal, ready for loading onto the ship. From the end of the regatta to delivery in Belgium, fewer than forty-eight hours had passed. The owner was able to confirm the boarding within the shipping company’s scheduled window, without having to cut his regatta short by a single day.
This type of transport has a rigid time window: the ship sails with or without your cargo, and the regatta does not end early because you have a logistics deadline. You need a transporter who works on Sundays, who knows the passes and international clearance regulations, and who does not need three days’ notice to set off. For us, it is all in a day’s work.
A few photos from the journey
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