p. 14
INTERVIEW
Jovin Rausi with Albert Fenech and Martin Meachin
ALL ABOVE BOARD Peter Valentino interviews Jovin Rausi, a sailor, an official, a friend to every club and a mentor to many individuals. He served the sport for decades, and the trade too, through an insurance firm he once owned. This interview isn’t a straightforward one
in tal-Għażżenin, and chasing cockroaches on
the 70s, I bought my first sailing boat dinghy, I
because your involvement in the sailing and
the pavement in the evenings. What fun it was
knew then that there was no hope for me. I was
boating world is so vast, it has ‘a finger in
for us kids, but not for the cockroaches though.
seriously addicted to the sea and sailing.
My father was an avid fisherman always with
Let’s go to actual sailing and racing. What
a fishing rod over the weekend and hardly
memories do you hold closest to your heart?
every pie’. When and how did your adventure begin? Ever since I can remember, my grandmother
ever catching anything. He just enjoyed the
(who brought me up) loved the sea, she never
tranquillity and solitude of the beach. But when
I got my first taste of sailing at Mellieħa bay.
owned a boat, but every year she used to rent
I could join him, I loved to go on the rocks at the
I had just bought a GP 14 and I parked it on
a place in St Paul’s Bay and we used to spend
Sirens Club chasing crabs. It was then that I
a trolley in tal-Għażżenin. The seller had
the summer there. Swimming every day, and
was first infected with the love for the sea and
promised to teach me how to sail but in that
occasionally joined by my cousins, sleeping on
remains a very serious and incurable disease
same weekend the dinghy championships
mattresses on the floor, fishing with our nets
right to this very day. When in my thirties, in
were taking place. In those days, it was run
