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"I like rowing, even if it is difficult to keep in balance sometimes. And I like the pond, seeing the birds and the fish, and the plants also", says Marta Casula, 9 year-old, leaving for a moment the small model of fassone she is building. Around her the other students of the construction and sailing school of the maestro Marco Pili and his son Davide, focused on tying the hay stalks firmly in the weft that makes up the ascending line of the keel.

Marta thus takes back an object that populates the ponds of the Oristano area from the Nuragic age, a simple woven marsh hay making a fishing boat also used by Phoenicians and Romans. "It was 2007 when we decided to set up the school", says Rimondo Cadoni, municipal councilor of Santa Giusta and one of the major promoters of the regatta that for years now has attracted thousands of tourists to the small town near Oristano. "The school is a flagship for the administration. It represents the continuity of an ancient tradition, renewed every year with the regatta. This year seven of the participants came from the school, and soon we would like to see a women-only competition".

The traditional building that houses the school in the historic center of Santa Giusta is not only a laboratory but also a museum of fishing tradition. Nets, pots and “bertivelli”, a splendid labyrinth placed in the pond to catch eels, crabs and shrimps. Outside, beyond the clearing, the canopy under which old and new fassoni rest, imposing, ancestral and still weighed down by the water absorbed during the last sailings.

"We practice navigation when the weather conditions allow it", explains Silvia Statzu, 14 year-old, a candidate to participate in the next competition, the first female to represent the tradition born from an intuition of Ireneo Ledda, who died in May and was the first, forty years ago, to see the role of the fassoni and the regatta in the promotion of the territory. "I really don't mind winning, my goal is to compete with adults. I've been attending school for seven years. By now I am able to sail and build it”. "It immediately seemed like a wonderful idea", says Costantina Tuveri, mother of Marta and Matteo. "It's a way to preserve the tradition, to take part in a story. Above all, children have fun", she adds.

"The course lasts for about three months, and begins with the closure of the schools. The practice takes place on a ‘ciu’, the traditional flat-bottomed fishing boat. The fassone must be put in water as little as possible. The boys start with the oars, and only later I teach them how to conduct the ‘cantoi’, the pole" explains maestro Pili. Construction begins with collecting marsh hay, "on nights that are not of full moon, because this is what tradition suggests, and we respect it". Then the drying, which has to last for three days. The hay is then braided to form long clusters that make up the keel, formed around the central axis by up to nine decks. Compared to the ancient fishing model the banks are lower. Vegetable stranding has been replaced by nylon. The oarlocks, born to be used in the regatta, are of olive or heather.

"I started getting interested in the fassoni at the age of twenty", says Pili. "My brother Antonello and I studied the object, we collected stories and suggestions of the village elders. In Santa Giusta the art of construction was dead, it started again. The boys give me enormous satisfactions. They are our future, the future of our culture".