Giacomo is in Istanbul!

Our good friend and fellow voyager, Giacomo de Stefano has arrived in Istanbul. After three years of planning, setbacks from sickness, waiting and effort, the journey is complete.

I doubt the man can believe it himself. I'm sure when he conceived this trip, he had no idea how much an epic it would become. 5400 kilometers across Europe by sail and oar, building community all along the way.

We applaud the Man on the River. Congratulations Giacomo, you have made us all stronger.

You can read all about this fabulous journey on Man on the River - London to Istanbul .

The Ness Yawl on the Po River

Doryman received a note from a compatriot in Italy recently about his voyage up the Po river, the longest river in Italy. This two month trip in an Iain Oughtred Ness Yawl is documented by Giacomo on his blog and it's a great story!

This is his note and a link to his site, well worth the visit:

"Congratulations for your blog and your work.
My name is Giacomo De Stefano and I rowed and sail for more than 1000 km the Po river, the Italian longest.
You can see more on my blog unaltropo.com


Thank you for the kind words, Giacomo! We admire your work, too!


Post Script: Giacomo has a new project for next year. This man's heart is in the right place!---
"North Sea to Black Sea (by fair means)":

"We undertake the voyage without the pretense of trying to teach anything, but with the objective of shining a light on that which we’ve forgotten. “The river” is a metaphor for life, and the voyage is a way of clearing the useless superstructure
that weighs us down; that is, the false security of material possessions. We want
to experience, and to show others, the wonderful feeling of freedom that can be felt from being transported by the current and by using the strength of one’s own arms and the wind to move in harmony with nature."

“A journey can be a key to finding our real nature and leaving behind the heaviness
of unneeded things, of enjoying how we can give and receive,” says Giacomo. “True happiness doesn’t come from having things, but from having the knowledge of how to attract good things to us. Prosperity is really a way of living and thinking."

Giacomo's convictions:
"With the help of Roland Poltock as master shipwright, along with and some boys and girls from the local community for the disabled and school students, we will use only using only recycled wood. Electric power will be supplied by a local wind farm."

Giacomo has taken the challenge to transform the culture of consumerism and to cultivate the human spirit. A grand and worthy aspiration.
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