Description of the interiors

L'Antonio II is a schooner with beautiful and fascinating wooden interiors restored by the Captain himself (he is a shipwright, too) in 2007. As well as the crew, it can contain 10 persons, but we prefer a maximum of 8 persons for a better quality and comfort.

The ship is provided with:

• four comfortable double rooms, including one whose bed can be divided in two single beds

• two toilets with hot water

• a kitchen with useful accessories

• a comfortable living room with a coal and wood-burning stove, a little library, a stereo hi-fi, an LCD TV, a computer, internet

• a large chartroom with a big charting table.

The schooner's technical description

• Length: 19,80 m

• Width: 4,20 m

• Displacement: 27 tons

It is qualified for commercial charter use with a "Permission of navigation" for a unbounded navigation; his crew is registered into the roll.

It is rigged out with:

• a normally aspirated motor 155 cv Aifo

• a propulsive equipment made up of two masts and a bowsprit with a sail of over 150 square metres surface, a big spanker plus three jibs (two boomed jibs, one flying jib), and a big sail called central "carbonera". All the sails are totally new.

Navigation equipment

• Two cartographic GPS

• Two sextants with two nautical almanacs, nautical and logarithmic tables plus a star finder

• A spherical geometry calculator

• Electronic and manual echo-sounder

• Two compasses

• A goniometric compass

• A VHF DSC radio transmitter

• Two handheld VHF radios

• Three anchors with a 100m chain

• A complete weather station with a barograph

• Two 500 l fuel tanks which guarantee a range of 900 miles

• A 100 l tank for fresh water

• A photovoltaic generator and an aeolian one which guarantee energy autonomy

• LED illumination and traditional candles and oil lamps

• An ocean "eurovinil" life raft for 12 persons

• A Kannad 406 MHz E.P.I.R.B. transmitter

• A rubber boat with a 10 Hp engine

• A lifeboat with two orders of oars

History of the schooner

The schooner L'Antonio II has been bought in 2006 by Message in a Bottle and restored in old-style until 2007 (with a special care for the interiors) by Captain Mario Palmieri.
It was built by engineer Battù in Mantova in 1986; it is an only copy extant which is inspired by a Canadian project created in order to achieve the legendary Northwest Passage, a model with a big keel like the ancient sailing ship of the end of 1800 and the beginning of 1900.
In Ravenna, in the ' 80s, it won a prize like the most beautiful boat of the Adriatic Sea.
Immediately afterwards the schooner was sold to three adventurous Roman young men which used it to do one and a half world tour and then to organize profitable trades on the Atlantic Ocean, above all between Cape Verde and Cameroon by frequent moorings on the Niger River. At the end of '90s the three men returned to the Mediterranean Sea.
Often, during his journeys along the Mediterranean Sea, the present Captain of the schooner meets many people who recognize his boat because in the past they had known the former owners, they went on a cruise with them, they lived many adventures on the same boat. Through the accounts of their adventures, the present Captain learned about bizarre stories: a night stranding on a Caribbean coral reef, exotic trades, equatorial wild storms, a mysterious wedding on the sea and more seafaring life stories.