‘A few hours of sleep were sufficient, and then we were ready to begin all over again – and at the moorings, always a Riva ready to welcome us…’
So said Gigi Rizzi, the 1960s playboy and one-summer-lover of Brigitte Bardot for whom a Riva speedboat with a richly varnished hull was as much a gentleman’s essential as a beautiful blonde, a Ferrari coupe and a waterside home with a well-stocked wardrobe and private jetty.
Oh, and a few nice watches, of course.
And had Swiss maker Frederique Constant been around 60 years ago, there’s a good chance Rizzi might have been spotted on the Riviera wearing one of the brand’s special “Runabout” watches.
In reality, Frederique Constant wasn’t founded until 1988 – and it was another 25 years before the Swiss maker struck up a relationship with the Riva Historical Society, a non-profit organisation co-founded by Carlo Riva and architect Piero Maria Gibellini to help preserve the original, wooden Riva boats built from the 1920s until the ’60s.
Riva’s roots go right back to 1842 when a young Pietro Riva began repairing and building yachts at Sarnico on Lake Iseo, northern Italy.
But it was his great grandson, the aforementioned Carlo, who had the vision to create a range of mahogany-hulled boats that went on to become the epitome of the jet-set era that Rizzi was a part of.
The arrival of glass fibre as a boat-building material seemed to sound the death knell for the viability of wooden Rivas and, although Carlo introduced the plastic-hulled Rudy in 1969, the future looked bleak and he sold the business in 1970.
A succession of owners followed until Riva was bought and revived by the Ferretti Group in 2000. Under its ownership the contemporary Riva brand combines the best of modern materials with aesthetic touches from the historic models. It evokes the style of a classic wooden boat without the drawbacks of the real thing – which are rather fragile and demanding to maintain.
For true aficionados of those elegant craft of the past, however, only wood is any good when it comes to owning a launch with real soul. And it’s strictly wooden Rivas that Frederique Constant has celebrated for the past 11 years with a succession of special watch models.
The latest in the Classics Runabout collection gets an all-new, electric-blue dial (matched by the stitching on the calfskin strap) and can be had in 42mm and 36mm diameter versions.
Inside the mirror-polished case there’s an FC-303 automatic movement, the works of which can be admired through a sapphire crystal caseback that carries the Riva Historical Society’s flag logo.
Each of the 1,888 watches being made is supplied in a special presentation box alongside an exquisite miniature replica of a Riva for an all-in price of £1,595 – which is considerably less than the record $975,000 paid for an actual Riva at auction in 2011.
Completed in 1996, it was the last new, wooden-hulled Riva to have been sold to the public and was delivered to the founding family of the giant Sony Corporation on December 23, 1998.
One of six “end of an era” commemorative editions produced, it had clocked up fewer than 20 hours of use in 12 years before the original owners consigned it to auction – their most ambitious voyage having been a return trip across Lake Garda for lunch.
Simon de Burton is a journalist and author who writes for the FT’s How to Spend It, British GQ and Boat International, among others
