The other badly damaged villages were: Borghetto di Vara, Brugnato, Bonassola, Levanto, Monterosso al
Mare, Vernazza (Spezia) e Aulla (Massa-Carrara),La Spezia, Vernazza and Monterosso.
On Sky News, images from the Coastguard of the flooded villages, it was visible that thousands of cubic
meters of mud and debris have been moved with extraordinary force from the nearby hills. Due to there
being no trees or vegetation, the force of mother nature destroyed everything in its path.
We were not sure of what outcome we would have had from our idea, we only knew that, in a way or another, we had to do something.
We are people who love the sea and sailing, so instinctively we thought about following the first rule that
is generally thought when you start sailing: at sea no one is left behind . So we thought to apply the same rule on dry land.
We knew well how to organise events so we decided to get as many sailboat as possible out at sea on the ”Golfo dei Poeti”
and ”La Spezia” waters to fundraise in favour of a non-profit (onlus) organisation of Brugnato , town who lost everything including the school buses specifically designed to carry the disabled kids to school.
This became our objective. We created a non-profit organisation and we put clear, as first action, that not one single euros would have been used for advertising, expenses or gadgets but that instead all the money would have been spent for the project.
The result of the fundraising campaing was 28.000 euros which have been spent to purchase two school
buses designed for the used of disabled people/kids and we delivered them directly to the Major of La
Spezia and the director of the onlus organisation.
This was a fantastic experience : seeing hundreds of boat in the waters of the ”Gulf of Poets” and ”La Spezia gulf” carrying the logo of ”10.000 sails of solidarity” was simply priceless and we shortly realised that we made a little miracle out of nowhere and that if we made this time we could do it again in the future.