On a recent evening, Elia Origoni stood at Sardinia’s south-eastern tip, watching the azure sky darken until it merged with the sea, and contemplating the most daunting leg of his ambitious trip.

In two days, he would set off on a 405km paddle across the Tyrrhenian Sea in hopes of becoming the first person to traverse Sardinia, Sicily and the entire length of Italy using only his feet, a rowboat
and his prodigious stamina.