“Leonidas" bears the name of the king of Sparta, hero of the Thermopylae’s battle. It brings its prestige to Cala Gavetta, the harbor of La Maddalena, the island with the most beautiful lateen fleet in the Mediterranean.
The boat is the reconstruction of the old Leonidas, a bull (leudo) built at the end of the XIX century by Lorenzo Figallo “Leoncin”, a master carpenter, in Lavagna, Liguria. The tracks of this boat, used to transport goods, merchandise and wine, were lost until 1968, when Sergio Spina, a ship designer, found it wrecked and abandoned on the island of Elba. Spina measured and drew the shapes of that wreck, but kept those drawings locked for years, until in 2003 Ivan Zanchetta knocked on his door looking for inspiration. Ivan is passionate about sailing history and is a lateen rigged sailboats lover. He already owned a 11 meters (35 feet) Sardinian fishing boat, “Lybra”, built in 1958 and restored in 2000.
 

Spina showed Ivan many drawings of antique boats, and he immediately chose Leonidas’. In the following four years he engaged in the demanding work of rebuilding it in the workshops of La Maddalena’s carpenters Carrano and Del Giudice. Rebuilding Leonidas was a challenge, accomplished with great effort, but also with perseverance and pride, and the satisfaction felt when the new Leonidas was born has been invaluable. As the Phoenix, this leudo was born again from its own ashes, and its strong, harmonious wood cuts through the water as a testimony to the history of Mediterranean people. The new Leonidas is used to show tourists around the Archipelago of La Maddalena and the south of Corsica, but it mainly is a boat that connects past and present times, and keeps a tradition that was disappearing alive.