«The good news is that things are moving. Whether we'll land somewhere concrete is still a distant hope. Meanwhile, affection is stirring—we've received many signs of solidarity. The institutions seem to have taken our situation to heart, and I say this with all necessary caution, knowing we don't yet have a certain answer. We hope this turns out to be an opportunity rather than a disaster».
At the start of this story, you should know, there was bad news. But let me back up. There is a sailing school in Pescia Romana called Mal di Mare, founded in 1995 by Mauro Pandimiglio. It opens its doors primarily to children and young people up to eighteen, and since 1999 it has been defined by one core commitment: genuine inclusion for all abilities. A place where everyone finds a space for who they are, exactly as they are. Apart from not being able to swim, participation in the week-long residential courses is not closed to anyone—not to those with various syndromes, cerebral palsy, communication disorders, relational and attention difficulties, social or psychiatric struggles. In a singular place like the seashore—a beach, a natural boundary where two worlds meet—it becomes easier to encounter others too. Here, young people discover and learn vital things not just about the sea but about themselves. For many, this support has been essential, especially during the pandemic, when psychological distress among young people rose sharply.
Now, after twenty-six years, the situation has changed. The property that housed the school's services and dormitories—adjacent to the beach plot leased for the sailing base—will not renew the rental agreement. This leaves an enormous question mark hanging over the school's future, which depends almost entirely on its week-long residential courses.
It was a shock, but the school is not giving up. Instead, it is searching for new spaces. A petition was launched, and thanks to support from friends and former course participants, it has drawn the necessary attention from public officials. We hope deeply that this precious reality will find new possibilities for growth, and that this difficult passage becomes one of those «necessary shipwrecks… moments of passage, necessary shedding» that Mauro Pandimiglio describes in his rich Modus Navigandi (Hoepli, 2018). Pandimiglio—the school's founder, seventy years old, a pedagogue and navigator, father of two daughters, one born with cerebral anoxia—writes about the fully human experience lived at Mal di Mare, grounding it in pedagogy, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and literature tied to the sea. We spoke with him to understand better what makes the Mal di Mare approach distinctive.
How did the sailing school in Pescia Romana come about?
Mal di Mare grew out of a group of fathers—who, for once, were up to something good!—who for a time took their kids out on the water. I had a local called Mal di Mare, a place for sailors in Trastevere. But my real dream was to be at sea. That business closed, and we opened the sailing school in Pescia Romana, with a clear focus on children and young people aged six to eighteen. Over time, various chances and stories—some seized, some lost—helped Mal di Mare grow. The turning point came when we opened to disability. At first we were just another residential sailing school. I visited schools at Caprera and Velamare to learn how to do it right. Opening a residential sailing school that welcomed disabled young people—I think we were among the first—put us on a different plane entirely. A fertile, transformative place. We had the good fortune to meet Giovanni Bollea. I remember long afternoons at his home, conversations of immeasurable value that I still draw on today. Another crucial piece was the experimental initiative of Handycup, a regatta where every crew had to include a young person in difficulty. From the very first edition in 2001, seventy boats showed up. We were amazed. That initiative laid the groundwork for the Italian Union of Solidarity Sailing at the Italian Yacht Club, established in 2003 with don Mazzi's Exodus and other organizations. We went to Brussels, to the European Parliament with fifty-five associations. The final Handycup was held in Malta in 2011, at a moment when Malta and Italy were quarreling over the migrant question, each blaming the other. We were actually named in official documents from heads of state for helping put the pieces back together.
The name Mal di Mare deliberately evokes both distress and nostalgia for the sea?
I've always believed that names find you even as you search for them. We discovered some meanings only later. We wanted the name to suggest the longing for boundless places—like mal d'Africa, that ache for Africa—while also sounding a bit ironic, like distress. Over time we learned how fertile shipwreck could be in each of our lives. We're living that now.
Who comes to your school?
The courses are open to children and young people from any background, of any gender, ability, or social position. When we began promoting the Navigar m'è dolce program in schools, we got so many responses that it became sixty percent of our total activity. Teachers accompanying school groups were intrigued by our pedagogical approach, so we began working with them too. Just before the pandemic we started doing this with parents as well—something we really should keep doing, because we're working with young people. We realized that what we were fundamentally doing was an education of feeling, of sensing—when in fact young people are shaped by an education in thinking. That matters because it leads to consequences about competence, knowledge, the division of labor that have caused too much damage. Parents need—we need, as parents and educators ourselves—a re-education in feeling. It's not about training. It's about searching together for values tied to sensing and listening. All of this rests on a conviction: that the sea is the cardinal element, the teacher. We gave shape to the earth as a place of doing, of building, of being and logos. The sea, inevitably cast out and treated as an obstacle, becomes fertile ground—an extraordinary place to meet others and listen to ourselves. Normally we teach people to speak and find solutions. What young people actually need is the opposite: to find questions, to be heard. If I am heard, I learn to listen. If I'm not, I never will.
Reading Modus Navigandi, what strikes you is the school's pedagogical method: it doesn't erase differences but lets uniqueness emerge, alongside others. How do these dimensions fit together?
Uniqueness arises from saying: we are not scraps, residual parts of society. Quite the opposite. There is extraordinary richness. And above all, a disabled person is a person. If I say disability doesn't exist, they'll think I'm mad. But it's true. We invented it. There is damage. Brain damage? Psychiatric? Social? These are damages, but they don't inherently make someone disabled. No one with a damage experiences themselves as disabled. Then there's the relationship between that damage and society. When the damage enters society, difficulty is born. That's when someone becomes disabled. We don't say society failed to integrate them—we blame them. Poor thing, we're sorry. It's a perverse mechanism. We need to set things straight: you keep disability. You invented it. Now disability and damage are treated as the same thing, but they're not. Disability happens in a relationship. Damage is in the flesh. We live in relations of disability, of exclusion. That includes exclusion born of paternalism—where I know what's best for you, what you need now. As a pedagogue, psychologist, educator, I'll fix you.
Does the experience at Mal di Mare carry home?
Like everyone, we make mistakes and stumble. But there's a great well of affection that young people carry with them. Many tell us they found a second family here. Young people need to find a world that is affectionate. We emphasize this a lot. We stepped away from technique immediately—we don't care about heroic performance. We care about human relationship, and many have found nourishment here. Sadly, the coldness and incomprehension in our society exists in families too. There's no time to listen. Some situations are complicated and painful. When a young person finds a teacher who listens, or a sailing school where they can be from morning to night in nature, with teachers they can talk to, where they find brotherly support—and where they understand that sailing isn't a test to see if you're good enough, because you're already good, you're already here with us—it means everything. With us, testing is banned, or at least diminished. Sure, we're human and conditioned too. But through training and research, we try to stay attentive. Finding a place where you already have worth when you arrive—that makes the difference.
A place where learning finally happens with joy. Why is it so hard for us to join learning with happiness?
The problem with learning is that you can't make something pass simply because it's important. It just gets stuck. It can pass only through a trusting relationship—not because I know and you don't, but because I'm with you in knowing things. We're learning together. If I see myself as someone who already knows and the other as someone who doesn't, I've created a divide that becomes an abyss. The other won't be in harmony with me. They do it because they're forced to, or they'll get a bad grade, or they're afraid of a thousand troubles. But not because they like it or because it makes them happy. We have to start from this: when you argue with someone, what matters most? Being right or being happy? School must answer the same question. Do I want to be someone who knows versus someone who doesn't, just to gain some privilege, a job, luck? Or do I want to live happily? We believe it's better to live happily. And to know happily.
Does everyone benefit from an experience like yours?
We can't be helpful to everyone—otherwise we'd be in another world. We hope to do better ourselves, to become less us and more together, in a relentless process that teaches us each day how to be with others, especially when we fail. We're taught that if a child is to do well, they mustn't make mistakes. We're conditioned to divide good from evil, and it seems to work: you learn to recognize evil and remove it from your life. But that's nonsense. Evil is a constituent of good. You can't split them. We learn far more from our mistakes than from what we do well. We need to help a child understand this: perfect your mistakes! Brecht said, «I am working intensively to accomplish my next mistake.» Do we have the courage to say that? That a society could be built on this? Probably not yet.