Milanese, third son of Adolfo Soldini, textile industrialist, Giovanni Soldini has been passionate about sailing since he was a boy. In the 80s he met Vittorio Malingri who was the first to organize a sailing base in Cuba, in Cayo Largo del Sur. And at the age of 16 he crossed the Atlantic for the first time in his life.
After winning the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers in 1989, a transatlantic regatta for cruise boats, he made his debut as a solitary navigator during the 1991 La Baule-Dakar Rally. He made two solo rounds of the world. In the Around Alone 1998 for solo navigators he places first in the 50-60 foot class. In February 2000 he received the Légion d'honneur, the highest honor of the French state, for the rescue at sea of Isabelle Autissier.
In 1996 he won the transatlantic solo regatta (OSTAR) and set a new record in the 50-foot class. On 12 February 2004, the President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, appointed him Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. On 31 December 2012 Soldini sets off aboard the Maserati VOR 70 monohull for a new record on the historic New York-San Francisco route: 13.219 nautical miles via Cape Horn.
On 15 January 2014, he crossed the finish line of the 14th Cape2Rio (3.300 nautical miles transoceanic from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro), setting the new record in 10 days 11h 29′ 57″. In 2016 Soldini and his team, after three years with the monohull Maserati VOR70, switched to the multihull: the trimaran MOD 70 “Maserati Multi70”.
On 24 October 2016 aboard Maserati Multi 70, he crossed the finish line first in the 37th Rolex Middle Sea Race with a time of 2 days, 1 hour, 25 minutes and 01 seconds, setting the new reference record for multihulls in the Maltese regatta, beating just over 10 hours the previous record (2 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 41 seconds), set in 2015 by Phaedo3. However, such "loneliness" did not distract him from the pleasure of gratifying his long crossings with a good meal on board.
“This – suggests Giovanni Soldini – is one of the most popular recipes on the boat, because easy to do and very tasty. Fillet the fish you have caught by depriving it of the spines, an operation to be performed by touch and with tweezers for some more difficult species. If you have caught a tuna you are lucky and you can skip this operation, even if cleaning your cockpit will be as demanding as and more than plugging. Fry first with the chopped or crushed garlic, then add the pachino or cherry tomatoes cut in two/fours, finally the salted capers (after rinsing them) and the pitted Taggiasca olives, which must never be missing on board. Who also likes a little oregano. When the gravy has taken on consistency, add it the fish in the pan taking care to cover it with the dressing also in the upper part. If there is no skin, 3 to 4 minutes of cooking on each side is fine. If you have kept the skin, start cooking on that side and only at the end of cooking turn the fillet”.
But you can also try one Pesto pasta with chickpeas and tomatoes. Here is Chef Soldini's recipe: “Fry the oil in a pan with a couple of cloves of garlic. Then add the washed and halved or quartered cherry tomatoes. When the cherry tomatoes have just begun to have the appearance of a sauce, remove the garlic, add a glass jar of chickpeas already cooked. You could also puree part of the chickpeas to obtain a creamy sauce. Prepare the pasta, preferably trofie or large tagliatelle according to your tastes, and once cooked al dente, season it with the sauce prepared in a pan. Add a jar of pesto, the cream of chickpeas, mix and serve”. The "Soldinian" variant in a pressure cooker is always possible. Soffritto, then the pasta with chickpeas and tomatoes, fresh and sea water, and finally after a couple of minutes of whistling, pour in the pesto.
Much faster to execute, a classic of boat cooking, are the Eggs with tuna. Here is the recipe suggested by Soldini: “Put the eggs in a saucepan and cover them with water. Light the fire and bring it to a boil. Turn off after 9/10 minutes and rinse them in cold water. In the meantime you will have prepared a mix of equal parts tuna and mayonnaise. Remove the shell, divide the eggs in half, remove the yolk and mix it with tuna and mayonnaise. Fill the eggs and serve with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. If you have it available, enrich the dish with pieces of tomato, basil and a few lettuce leaves".
