Tilli Antonelli talks about himself and reveals how the Sp110 project was born.

Tilli Antonelli, the sporty and innovative soul of Italian yachting, talks about himself and his passion for this work in this interview given to SUPER YACHT 24.

Tilli Antonelli founded Cantiere Navale dell'Adriatico in 1981. In 1985, he founded both the shipyard and the Pershing brand (which later became part of the Ferretti Group in 1998), and later joined Wider Yachts. A passionate sailor, he has participated in major regattas. It was there that he met Italian entrepreneur Raul Gardini, joining the crew of his 45-foot yacht, Naif, in 1973.

Sailing was the key to your early career and also to your outlook on the future. During that initial phase, you met and joined Raul Gardini's team. How would you describe him today?

My first passion and my first approach to the sea was definitely sailing, which over the next ten years increasingly captivated me. Gardini was a visionary, an uncommon man; his penchant for seeking an alternative to 'fuel' fuels was already a vision at least 30 years ahead of its time, but the venture was nipped in the bud because it was evidently bothering so many people. In sailing, he wanted to discover and make significant use of new materials, such as carbon and epoxy resins, then only used by NASA for some parts of the Challenger. And he had already established a shipyard with extraordinary expertise for the time. I don't know what he would have thought of the recent America's Cup races today... I really don't know, but I do know that innovation was always an important factor for him.

How did your approach to boat building begin and continue?

“Once I realized that, even though I was pretty good, I'd never become the Gino Ricci of sailing, I decided to pour my knowledge into building this type of boat, and so my first shipyard was born, Cantiere Navale dell'Adriatico, through which we produced racing and cruising boats. Lucio Dalla fell in love with one of these during a trip to the Tremiti Islands, and we built him one of his own. But the market was in decline at the time, so we turned to motorboats, which—I admit—I knew very little about. Despite this, we built our first Pershing, which was quite successful, partly because it was out of the ordinary. At the time, fast boats were very narrow, noisy, and cramped, while ours was the exact opposite: it wasn't super-high-performance, but it had three nice cabins, three nice bathrooms, and comfortable outdoor living areas. This was Pershing's motto: combining performance with comfort. Fulvio de Simone's design was very popular, and from there we developed the Pershing range.”

How does he arrive at Wider and how does he manage to characterize it?

In recent times, certain balances had been disrupted at Pershing, partly due to the 2008 crisis. After trying to buy the company back and waiting almost a month for the group's response, which was ultimately negative, I was very sad to no longer be able to stay. Not even a month later, Wider proposed producing boats with side openings—openings that hadn't been seen before and that almost all boats have today, which makes me very happy because I don't like copying, but I do like being copied. The boat, despite being very strange and perhaps not even very beautiful, was making a name for itself, perhaps also because Wider had presented the electric propulsion project and had received very significant media exposure, quickly gaining a good image in the field. This 47-meter, all-aluminum boat aroused great curiosity. Among other things, its engine room was in the bow, an area I thought was ideal for leaving as much space as possible for games in the most attractive part of the boat, the stern. Since it was electric, there was no mechanical connection between the engine room and the powertrain. propulsion. The boat was a success, and my voluntary departure from the company was due to a misunderstanding with a very important partner, whom I nevertheless acknowledge to have played a significant role. Within two weeks, I contacted Dr. Perotti and landed at Sanlorenzo.

What do you think is an essential ingredient for doing good work in this sector? Let's take the Sp110 project, for example...

What's important to me is creating a team of true specialists, where I might have to provide guidance; alone, I'd be unable to do much in a field like this. The Sp110 project team included key figures such as Zuccon Studio for the exteriors and architect Piero Lissoni. And Dr. Perotti, who, in addition to being a great admirer, truly understands the product.

I have a strong product focus and focus exclusively on designing it, trying not to copy it. Others somehow inspire you to develop something that you can then develop into a broader vision, but you have to try to do something different. This is a market that needs new offerings: we're talking about toys for people who already have everything, and these yachts must stimulate the imagination and satisfy the ego of their owners. So it's a constant race to come up with innovative solutions.

The Sanlorenzo SP110, as a sporty, high-performance boat, has a fairly limited market, let's say for amateurs, but it is still a niche market and in this niche it is certainly important to be recognized for its lines, space and performance.”

How did the project for this “smart performance” boat come about, what are its strengths, and how is it going?

I first had an idea for this type of yacht in late 2018; when I met Sanlorenzo, the shipyard was already thinking about experimenting with this type of boat, so my involvement was also welcomed. The project is also going extremely well commercially. A significant advantage, objectively, has been the ten-year stagnation of competition in this segment; it was therefore quite easy to find solutions that would lead to evolutionary steps in a landscape of absolutely unique solutions. Sustainability plays a very important role today, and the higher a boat's speed, the more difficult it becomes to make it sustainable. If you put thousands of horsepower into it, seeking sustainability seems pointless. 'Sp' therefore stands for 'smart performance': a concept that minimizes the blind spots typical of a fast, high-performance boat by using cleaner, more intelligent equipment and energy generation methods, striving to reduce fuel consumption.

The Sp110 is also an easy boat to understand, and when an object is easily identified and understood in its motivations, lines, and spaces, then it has a good chance of working. We'll be officially presenting it tonight, on the night of San Lorenzo, in Porto Cervo at Cala di Volpe. And then there will be appointments at the boat shows: it will debut in Cannes, then in Genoa and Monte Carlo."

Can a performance yacht truly be “sustainable”?

It's quite anachronistic to call a yacht sustainable when it consumes 7-800 liters of fuel per hour. But to reach certain speeds, if we had built the boat traditionally, we would have consumed 1.200 liters instead of 800. Today, the only boat that can be defined as sustainable is a sailing boat. Diesel-electric boats still burn fuel. To limit consumption, weight control is essential. The Sp110 was designed to be as light as possible to achieve performance with engines that are less powerful than the competition.

Building a hybrid boat of that size, even with fairly limited electric power, would have meant adding nearly 8 tons, which would have drastically reduced any hopes of a high-performance vessel. We installed batteries, but they're only needed to avoid intensive use of the generators. When the boat is at anchor, it can run all night with air conditioning, lighting, and everything else powered by the lithium batteries. This can also be used when swimming around the boat without the noise and smell of a generator, which can sometimes be a nuisance. They're recharged while sailing or by plugging into a port outlet.

The boat is built using vacuum infusion technology, entirely in sandwich construction (with an external lamination layer on both sides and a foam core of varying thickness and density) to achieve strength and lightness. This process, which requires expensive materials and technologies, has the enormous advantage of achieving the desired results while avoiding all resin, catalyst, and other fumes, which remain inside the system and do not cause harm to operators or the environment. This is a technology that Pershing pioneered in 96 and which, now perfected, Sanlorenzo is using for the first time on this SP110.

What else can you tell us about this new project?

Dr. Perotti has decided to move beyond the 90', which has already been decided and for which models and molds have been started, and to pursue the third project, the SP130. This is because this boat has characteristics that make it completely different from the previous generation and is in high demand. The three models will certainly express the same concept in different ways, but always with the aim of a high-performance boat. We prefer to install a higher number of engines rather than fewer but more powerful ones. This is because we want to be able to travel slowly, perhaps with just the crew, from one place to another, while consuming very little fuel. The 110 is a three-engine boat, the 130 will be four-engine, and the 90 twin-engine. They will share hydrojet propulsion, which represents a very important innovation for Sanlorenzo and offers a huge advantage in terms of draft: with the SP110 fully loaded, it is 1.3 meters, allowing you to reach any beach.

Let's end this interview with a question I didn't ask you...

"I'd just say: what I do is a great job. Every morning I wake up with something new to do or propose, and I hope to be able to do it for a long time, despite my 'tender age,' to continue having fun and doing something meaningful. I've never liked doing just for the sake of doing things, nor have I liked making copies, and having something more to say than anyone else doesn't bother me, that's all."

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