Article published on Arte Navale magazine (no. 64, February/March 2011)
By Gianfranco Meggiorin and Mauro Mancini.
Translation from Italian by Danny Vitri.
Ten years after the tragic and inexplicable shooti ng that made Andrea Stella a paraplegic, he now takes on with his catamaran a new thrilling project named “The Rights Plough the Waves of the Ocean”
The catamaran with Nave Italia in Le Grazie bay, near La Spezia.
Spirito di Stella is a truly special catamaran and the name of a noprofit organization started in 2003. The boat represents the fulfillment of Andrea Stella’s personal dream to return to sail in spite of being confined to a wheelchair. It will then soon change that into something more. Thanks to this boat designed without architectural barriers, Stella wants to convince disabled people that the wheelchair does not condemn anybody by sending a strong message to architects, engineers and designers. To project a boat (or a car, or a house) that is pretty, functional and accessible to disabled is not an impossible task but has to be felt as a priority. In August 2000 as soon as he turned 20 Andrea was in Miami, Florida, for a prizetravel following his degree in Law two weeks earlier. One evening, getting back to his car, he was confronted by three criminals about to steal it. He just had the time to notice them as one of them, even if unthreatened, pointed a gun to him and shot him with two bullets, injuring his liver and one of the lungs. Stella stayed 45 days between life and death. As he finally recovered, he had to re-shape his life starting from a wheelchair because the injury caused by one of the bullets was on his spinal marrow. Stella cultivates the dream of sailing again as he did in the past, but realizes that a boat for a disabled which can be controlled for both his personal needs and manoeuvring does not yet exist in this world. With the basic support of his family, friends and sponsors he finds the way to design a catamaran without barriers, the Spirito di Stella. “If we are making available a traditionally off-limits means of transport transforming her into a functional and comfortable boat, why not use the same philosophy to improve the standards of facilities in our cities, houses, and other means of transport? In short, why not realize integrated projects to allow everybody, whether disabled or limited in his movements to live better?”.
Andrea Stella on the wheel of his Spirito di Stella.
After undertaking a first crossing of the Atlantic in 2004 from Genova to Miami, Andrea sailed from La Spezia to Miami on 7th December, calling at Tenerife, the Canary Islands and Martinica. Spirito di Stella, the catamaran without barriers, is now crossing the Ocean to promote and spread the UN Treaty on the Rights of Disabled People and Tourism without barriers whose principles are written on her sails. A sensational voyage that promotes the needs of environmental sustainability. In fact, Andrea and his catamaran promote different types of research work in the field of the medicoscientific environment in co-operation with the Environmental Ocean Team (www.ocean-team.org), sending a strong message of equality to all (www.lospiritodistella.it). Navimeteo is “onboard” with Andrea Stella in this project, supporting him along the routes of the Mediterranean and the Ocean, by installing its NavimeteoSat with its personalized weather service. It represents an up-grading on the weather system to be used onboard, as it was already used by Andrea Mura on the Vento di Sardegna sailing boat sailed to victory on the Route du Rhum Regatta. As a matter of fact several captains and skippers of leisure boats have now chosen this valuable service to increase their safety at sea across all the routes of the Mediterranean and the Ocean. Thanks to a satellite transponder and a display installed onboard the boat, NavimeteoSat weather centre are continuously capable of tracking the route of the vessel even in the open sea, and broadcast any weather warning in a timely and localized way. To know the position of the boat, her route and speed is essential to provide more accurate weather information. Every boat becomes an actual floating marine laboratory. All this provides a contribution to the development of services for the safety of leisure and professional sailors.
Best wishes for sailing before the wind Andrea!