Hello my friends. How are you? I am well. After one year many things happened.

A beautiful circumnavigation of Mallorca with an engineless llaut, a traditional fishing boat voltamallorca.com, a few hundred kilometers skiing and towing my ecopulk, in an old clean way, in Norway manonthesnow.com and some talks, interviews etc etc.

Also, I’m still restoring Memphis and become proud member of the project called Blue Oceans TV founded by Terence Bulley, a very very very interesting man.

Intense months so.

Now I am so happy. After three years of hard work the film about Man on the River trip is ready and the world premiere will be during the Biografilm Festival in Bologna.

It hasn’t been an easy process. Paolo Muran, Nicola Pittarello, Anna Sandrini, Josephine Shaumburg, Bruno Porto and Leon Greco worked with just a little financial support from a crowdfunding campaign, dedicating a lot of their time and energy to the film making. With more than 14 Terabyte and 600 interviews it was heartbreaking to cut some of them. I still didn’t watch the film..and I am so excited. It will be my first time with you all in Bologna.

The premiere will be in Bologna, in the Arlecchino Movie theater on June 10th 2015, 19:30. You are all welcome to come. Please check the Bologna Biografilm Festival web site for further details. Go to programma then click on June the 10th.

Then other festivals already asked Paolo to present the film and hopefully soon will be available.

All the Man on the River team would like to thank the persons who supported us in this long project. Without them it wouldn’t have been possible to finish the film.

Be water my friends.

See you there

Sorry for the silence but I paid all the price of this freedom. With all myself. Commitment, work without schedules, passion that must not be extinguished. It doesn’t, in fact.

Snow is nothing but frozen water. After so many words, projects and meetings, now I need to stop this rushing river of energy. The River of January is still and motionless, it saves all energies for spring.

I’ll be back to my roots, to my landscapes in black and white. To pure wind. To people who greet each other when they meet and are happy. Because there are few humans in white. (more…)

Dear friends,

it has been a long time since I wrote something.

I’ve been around meeting people, sharing and restoring Memphis, in Mallorca, for the next project, (please see www.bewater.info).

This week, from the 24th to the 30th I will be in Istanbul one year later invited by the International Boat Show.
I still remember the emotion on the arrival at the Rahmi Koc Museum, in the Golden Horn.
It happened today, exactly one year ago, and it’s also my birthday. What a gift I did receive from the “fatus”.

I will be happy to meet you at the boat show in Pendik, on the Marmara Sea. (more…)

Palermo is sumptuous and obscene. Palermo like New Delhi, where the fabulous palaces of the Maharajas lay next to the bodies of the dying pariah. Palermo like Cairo, where putrid hieroglyphs of shacks lay next to forests of skyscrapers and gardens.

Palermo is like all the capitals of those people who never managed to be a nation. In Palermo, the corruption is physical, tangible and aesthetic: It’s a beautiful woman, rotten by bad moods, with black fingernails, but also so mysteriously beautiful. Palermo is Sicily’s history, cowardice and heroism, despair, fury, defeats, rebellions. Palermo is also Spain, the Moors, the Swabians, the Arabs, the Normans, the Angevins: No other city is as Sicilian as Palermo, but Sicilians don’t love it. (more…)

Just some words to thank you all for the Classic Boat’s Person of the Year award.

Yesterday in the Bremont Club I couldn’t be there. So my great friend Alireza Iravani and Emma went to receive the prize. This is the text I’ve written and I would like to share with all the persons who couldn’t be there either.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

For me, it is a very emotional moment to receive this prestigious award, and I am so sorry not to be there with you tonight.
First of all I would like to thank the air, the water, animals and all the people who helped me to complete this project successfully. A special thank goes also to The Classic Boat staff, Dan Houston, Steffan Meyric Hughes, Adrian Morgan, and all others.

It’s hard to believe that a mountain boy like me which for years, used to dream of beautiful wooden boats published in The Classic Boat, to be voted as the person of the year by the addicted readers of that sort of Classic Wooden Boat Addicts’ “Porn Magazine”!

And a particular thanks goes to Mr Iain Oughtred who designed the Ness Yawl. Malgrè moi she was able to reach safe and sound to Istanbul.

I am water, we all are at least 70% water. That includes the alcohol rate which, I guess, will be higher later on tonight!

My trip was a great chance to learn how beautiful is to sail, row and live peacefully in harmony with the nature and human beings. No tricky engine, no electric stuff, no nonsense.
This voyage was more than having fun on a beautiful boat. It was living with less. And with less, I learned, we can do more.

Please, just consider one moment about what can be done for this “miracle” called Planet Earth, with boats, possibly, clean boats.

After the conclusion of the Man on the River project we have learned that more than 50 families established their own activity, working with nature, not against it, along the Riverbanks of Europe. For me and for all my team this is a great achievement.

So, thanks again to everybody. I would be happy to meet you, have a chat, or just row or sail. Just call me.
I’ll be sailing or working on the water somewhere.

Be water my friends. And please drink whatever you like tonight.

Giacomo De Stefano

I’m writing from Port de Pollença, a wonderful bay in the island of Mallorca.

I’m here to restore Memphis of Dartmouth, an old ketch from 1928 that will be part of the next project I’m working on with a few friends: Marcel Dolega, Alena Zima, Nicola Zago, Volker Saul, and Joanna Bark.

The project is called Be Water.

I’m busy with Phil, a kind friend who’s giving lots of help, teaching me so many things about how to fix the boat, that I’ll sail towards London through the Rhone and the French Canals in the late spring of 2013. (more…)