Sailors Without Borders
Co-founder | Humanitarian Foundation | Sailing
“Every master is bound, so far as he can do so without serious danger to his vessel and persons thereon, to render assistance to any person in danger of being lost at sea.”
— The International Convention on Salvage, IMO 1989, Article 10.1.
I was born into a family of activists, raised by an Artist and a Captain. I have lived on boats and sailed thousands of nautical miles across seas and oceans. When the refugee crisis reached the Mediterranean in 2015, it was not a distant news story — it was happening on the water, to people in boats, in a world whose rules I understood well and where my skills could actually help. We could do something — me, my father, brothers and all our friends. So we did. Looking the other way was not an option.
What started in 2016 as informal help from a crew of sailing activists conducting search-and-rescue operations grew into a registered humanitarian foundation operating across countries. During these years, Sailors Without Borders carried out SAR operations, delivered aid at sea and inland, housed refugees, and helped build crisis-coordination infrastructure in Greece, Italy, Malta, Poland, and Ukraine.
My main role in SWB, besides being a skipper, is structural work: research, risk assessment, writing project proposals, and overseeing their implementation. I am also the caretaker of SWB’s visual identity.
