AN ITALIAN couple driven to desperation by their six-year-old son’s acute form of asthma set sail with him yesterday on a home-made boat in the hope that living permanently at sea will help to cure him.

Paolo and Paola Frascisco, from Bellinzago, near Novara in northern Italy, said that the vessel offered the only hope for their son Niky. It was launched at the port of Cremona on the River Po, and will head for the Aeolian Islands near Sicily, where the family will live on the boat.

Signor Frascisco said that the 26-metre (85ft) steel vessel, the Walkirye, would cruise in the open sea, calling at ports to refuel and take on provisions.

The couple built the boat in their back garden, under the incredulous gaze of their neighbours, at a cost of €150,000 (£108,000), their life savings. They said it took them three years, with the help of Niky’s uncle, Bruno Frascisco, a keen sailor and amateur boatbuilder, to a design by Aldo Gatti, a marine engineer from Milan.

To ensure that his education does not suffer Niky will be linked by webcam and a satellite dish to a classroom computer at a primary school on the island of Lipari. The project has the backing of the Italian Ministry of Education, which said it was a “useful experiment in long distance education” which could be applicable to “other unusual situations” in which children were unable to attend school.

Signora Frascisco said the family was prepared to stay at sea for years to help Niky. She said they had first had the idea of taking to the sea after returning with him by ferry from a trip to the island of Elba. “We could see the improvement and thought — why not keep him at sea all the time? “It is not a complete cure but it will help him — and us — to survive,” she told The Times. “The boat will be our home, our workplace and his schoolroom.”

The family hoped to recoup some of their outlay on the boat by offering tourists trips in the waters near Sicily.

Avvenire, the Roman Catholic daily, said that Niky would probably be the most envied schoolboy in the whole of Italy despite his illness, a rare form of asthma. “Unlike other schoolchildren he will not be gazing with longing out of the window. He will be under sunny skies with the sea breeze in his hair.”

Signor Frascisco said it would have cost £1 million to have the boat built in a shipyard. The 35-tonne Walkirye has two masts and a 145 horsepower engine. Yesterday, she sailed along the Po to Mantua, from where she will head for Chioggia and the open sea.

Signora Frascisco said they hoped to reach the Aeolian Islands at the end of June.

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