Great look at the restoration of a beautiful old ship.
“If you want to build a ship,” the French pilot, poet, and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” That lesson need not be conveyed to Angelo Bonati, CEO of Swiss watch manufacturer Officine Panerai, who quoted Saint-Exupéry at last fall’s unveiling of the newly restored Eilean. Bonati and his team of naval architects and shipwrights had gathered at an Italian naval base in La Spezia to celebrate the rebirth of Eilean (Gaelic for “little island”) after Panerai’s two-and-a-half-year, 40,000-hour restoration of the 72-foot, two-masted Bermudian ketch. Oblivious to the driving October rain, a brass band played exuberant tunes as Eilean’s crew stood proudly on her immaculate teak deck before an international crowd of admirers. – From Robb Report