Sad news from the yacht and superyacht industry, with the accidental death this week of Paolo Vitelli, founder of the Italian Azimut-Benetti Group in 1985.

Paolo Vitelli, a great captain of industry in the yachting sector, an exceptional boss and a visionary, has passed away at the age of 77, following an accidental fall in his chalet in the Aosta Valley.

Who would have thought in 1985, when he took over the Benetti shipyard, that this Italian industrialist, who founded the Azimut shipyard in 1969 while still an economics student in Turin, would succeed in creating the world leader in the yachting sector?

Few people did, and yet Paolo Vitelli, with his flair and daring, has written one of the finest pages in the history of yachting over the last 50 years, making his group the world leader in the sector, a family group with sales of almost 1.3 billion euros, headed since last year by his daughter Giovanna Vitelli.

A group with 5 shipyards in Italy (Fano, Aviglia, Savona, Viareggio and Livorno) and one in Brazil (Itajai), employing 2,500 people, offering a complete, broad and deep range of yachts and superyachts from 9m to 100M in length, whose success is measured by an order book of 2.6 billion euros extending to 2029, enough to protect it from the current economic shocks.

This success is all the more incredible in that it has lasted for almost a quarter of a century, without interruption!

For 25 years, Azimut-Benetti has been the undisputed leader in the yacht and superyacht market, despite repeated attempts by Chinese and Russian investors to dislodge it from this position, who invested small fortunes in its competitors.

It has to be said that Paolo Vitelli knew how to feel the wind, and the Azimut story began with the sale of his first yacht to Onassis in 1975, an Azimut AZ43 BALI, a harbinger of a success story that has never been called into question.

Arrivederci al Capitano Vitelli!