A meeting was held today at the Italian Consulate in Sydney with officers of the crew of the catamaran Spirito di Stella, fully accessible to people with disabilities, which is making a cruise around the world at the same time as the school ship Amerigo Vespucci, visiting three ports in Australia: Brisbane, Cairns, and Darwin. Present at the meeting were Andrea Stella, who designed and built the 18-metre catamaran, Admiral Vincenzo Montanaro, and Colonel Marco Bertoli, Defence Attaché stationed in Canberra. The project, commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, aims to enable people of different cultures and abilities, disabled and non-disabled, to share the experience of the sea by sailing, with the mission of demonstrating that barriers of all kinds can be broken down, while respecting the values enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Spirito di Stella, designed and equipped to ensure wheelchair accessibility for civilians and military personnel of Italian and foreign armed forces, set sail from Genoa last October and will return to La Spezia in the spring of 2025. In Australia it will stop in the ports of Brisbane from 9 to 13 August, Cairns from 26 August to 3 September, and Darwin from 24 September to 6 October, where it will join the school ship Amerigo Vespucci, also engaged in a world tour to promote Italy and its historical and cultural traditions. Together the two ships will then set sail for La Spezia.
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