Two Italians floated cars across the Atlantic 20 years ago today to fulfil a dying father’s ambition
- In 2000, Marco Amoretti floated for 119 days from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean as his father died of cancer
On May 4, 2000, 24-year-old Marco Amoretti, his two brothers and a friend, Marcolino De Candia, cast off from the Canary Islands in two of the strangest boats ever conceived. The four men were in cars. They had sealed the vehicles, mounted them with sails and were set for the Caribbean, around 5,000km away.
The journey had been Amoretti’s father’s, Giorgio’s, lifetime goal. But every time he had tried to organise the trip, the admin and funding had foiled him.
“He was a very a special personality,” Amoretti, from Italy, said. “A dream is a strange human feeling, but all his life he was searching for freedom, for fantasy, for a performance and try to cross the limits of the normal world.”
In 1999, Giorgio was diagnosed with cancer and given three to six months to live. The brothers went into action to finally get the trip off the ground. They got the cars to the Canary Islands together. But by the time they were ready to leave, Giorgio was too ill to join them. He was replaced by Candia.
“We started without my father. But by the time I was in the middle, he was dead. So, he never got to see us to the end. But, he could imagine it,” Amoretti said.
