René Seindal

Today has been a calm and hot day and I have made good progress for a second day. I’ve paddled from Cala della Speranze to Porto Alabe (5km S of Bosa) with a short detour up the river to Bosa, about 39km in all.

I launched early (for my standards at least) at 8.30 to take advantage of the calm weather. No a wind was moving, and the only waves were the sorry remains of the swells from yesterday. It couldn’t have been easier and I was at Capo Marargiu in no time. At the Torre Argentina I stopped for lunch and an hour’s rest.

At Bosa Marina I got a bit curious, and started to paddle up the river Temo to get a glimpse of Bosa and the medieval fortress above the city. I ended paddling all the way to the centre of Bosa, with the cathedral at the old bridge. On the way back I stopped at Bosa Marina for an icecream.

From there it was only a few km to the beach of Porto Alabe where I will stay the night.

Tomorrow I have another stretch of deserted coastline to negotiate, until S. Catarina di Pittinuri. I hope to be able to round Capo Mannu tomorrow, but it depends on the weather. The weather forecast is much like for today, with mostly easternly winds most of the day, which should leave me sheltered by the mountains, but tomorrow will show what tomorrow will be like.

(Entry written yesterday evening but not posted due to lack of mobile connectivity)

Today I finally got started. I’ve made it a short day, for various reasons, so I’ve just paddled 15.5km from Fertilia to Cala della Speranza. Tomorrow I will try to get to Bosa Marina.

This morning couldn’t have been more different from yesterday. The sun was shining from a partially clouded sky, and it was even a bit hot. There were a bit of wind at sea, but on land it was calm.

The first thing to do was shopping, buying food and snacks for the next few days. I then changed, checked everything one last time, and packed the kayak, while the phone was charging. When everything was ready, I set off for the camping office with the packed kayak on a trolley.

The trolley is quite solid, and didn’t seem to mind the load, except for the stupid plastic things they had used to keep the wheels in place. The load simply tore them apart and a wheel would roll off. In the end the caretaker of the camping gave me a hand across the road to the beach.

Karel Vissel has kindly offered to send me forecasts as he did last year, and it was spot on: force 3-4 SSW with waves of just under 1m.

I was on the water at 11. My first task was to say hello to the ramp in the harbour where I pulled the kayak up last year. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to say afterwards to have done the entire circumnavigation of Sardinia, albeit in two turns.

In front of Alghero is a small island with a lighthouse. Somebody had been reckless or unfortunate, because a sailing boat lay wrecked on the island. I tried to get closer for a good photo, when I was caught by the breaking waves around the island, and almost without warning I was sent surfing towards Alghero. I have practically zero experience surfing, so I just kept the kayak steady with a low brace until it stopped.

I paddled slowly today. I want to take a little time getting used to the Skim Distance again, and to paddling a loaded kayak again. I want to see how my current physical shape is, before I try to push harder. My experience with kayak traveling is limited to what I did last year, so I still have loads to learn and I’m not sure just plunging into it to see what happens is the best way to have a positive experience.

I stopped for a lunch break, and did one of those mistakes that’s supposed to teach you something. I knew there should be a small beach after Alghero, and when I saw a bar on a rock I thought that that must be it. In front of the bar was a rocky outcrop with loads of breaking waves, but just before that was a small beach with what looked like the usual piles of algae at water’s edge. I went in through the small surf, but saw in the very last moment that the algae were in fact small rocks. I changed directed and landed on a 3 by 4 pebble beach between a lot of rocks, and I had to park the kayak at a rather steep angle to get it clear of the waves. I used a neoprene cockpit cover to avoid scraping off too much gelcoat.

The next beach was some 8km down the coast, and I headed for that with the intent of deciding what then to do when I got there. I had to round a cape with a small island a few km before the beach, but didn’t really think much of it. When I got closer, I could see that the passage between cape and island was very agitated, at times completely covered in white foam. When trying to paddle around the island, I discovered that the other side of the island was even worse, with huge swells breaking all over a wide area. I would have to make a detour of several km to get around the nasty area. I decided that the inner passage was the lesser evil. As I approached, I noticed that it was only really agitated every once in a while. The rest of the time it was just very choppy. I sat there for a few minutes contemplating the situation, when it struck that the foam was from swells that had moved around the island to break in the passage. They were 2-3m and I definitely didn’t want one of them on my head, but they seemed to come in groups of three with a more quiet period inbetween. I waited for a group to break, positioned myself a few metres from the white area, had the next group of swells breaking just in front of me and paddled like mad. It worked, I got across the white area and the next set of swells broke well behind me.

Situations like that makes me really nervous. I do know how to roll, I have a standard sweep roll to both sides, but it has never worked for me in “combat”. Until I sort that out I cannot really rely on it in an emergency.

I arrived at the beach in Cala della Speranza at around 4. The same swells were still arriving directly on the beach and they broke at a distance from the beach. There were no sheltered corners, and a lot of algae that could be rocks, so I sat there for a while before I decided where to land. Besides me the breaking waves made the cutest little tunnel, so I grabbed my camera to see if I could get a picture. Several tries and no success. The waves must have pushed me forward a bit while I took pictures, because suddenly a wave broke just behind me, and I was rather unceremoneously shoved onto the beach. I reacted just in time with a brace so I came in bow first and not sideways.

I decided to stay. There are some 16km from here to the next beach, along a rocky coast without any landings. I hope I can make it to Bosa Marina tomorrow, but Karel writes of force 4-5 winds with waves like today, so I’ll have to see what to do.

There’s a closed bar above the beach, with a very nice roof, so I’ll speend the night under that and save the tent for another night.

My current position is 40°29.729′N 8°22.241′E

The forecast said thunderstorms in the night and morning, and thunderstorms we got. The first came at 4 in the morning, and gave me a good idea about why some people find thunder scary. It was just overhead, lightning almost continually while a constant thunder rolled back and forth over the sky.

After the thunder came a downpour which has continued since, transforming most of the camping into muddy pools. Another thunderstorm passed in the early morning, around 7-8, and yet another as I’m writing this, at 11-12.

The current forecast promises more thunderstorms for the rest of the day, followed by light rain during the night. Friday should be clear and sunny, about 20° C and moderate winds. Saturday and Sunday will have scattered clouds but at that time I hope to be well clear of the Alghero area and more towards Bosa.

I’m a bit worried about my tent. Its an old Jack Wolfskin lightweight tent which has served me well for some 15 years, but it is a long time since it has taken this kind of weather. When the rain was at its worst this morning, it had accumulated quite a few drops of water on the inner tent, so the seams of the outer tent might be leaking. The inside of the tent has stayed nice and dry until now, but I have taken the precaution of leaving it empty except for my thermorest and my sleeping bag packed in a dry bag. If necessary I’ll bivy under a roof somewhere in the camping, since I have it all for myself.

There’s little I can do with a day like this, so I just hang around bars, writing emails, looking at weather forecasts and maps and drinking huge amounts of Italian coffee.

Two seconds ago I could enjoy the spectacle of an Ape aqua-planing across the church square here in Fertlia. For the uninitiated, an Ape is a three-wheeled micro-lorry with 50cc engine, hence legally a scooter here in Italy, so they’re often driven by elderly people without a driver’s license. Does wonders for traffic safety.

I’m back in Fertilia today, almost ready to continue the journey around Sardinia.

Francesco drove me and my gear from Cardedu to Fertilia this afternoon, and I am now well installed in a camping a few hundred metres from where I stopped last year.

The local weather forecast promises a thunderstorm tonight or in the early morning, so I will sit that out here, and then launch as soon as the weather behaves again, which should be tomorrow afternoon or the day after tomorrow at worst. Afterwards I should have at least two reasonably good days to get started on.

Last year, when we started our circumnavigation of Sardinia, our very first camp site was on a little beach behind the Marina Piccola at Poetto, on the outskirts of Cagliari.

In the morning Wendy left on foot to buy or find something, I don’t remember what, and took her time. When she came back, she had met another kayaker who had offered her a coffee and was on his way around to meet us.

Roberto Durzu came to the beach paddling a yellow plastic kayak. We had a nice chat and took some photographs together as we took down camp and got ready to start. Roberto followed us for a while, maybe half an hour or so, before he turned back home after a different morning paddle.

Roberto later commented on the blog, and he wrote later still asking for advice on buying a new kayak, and about what he ended up buying.

Now as I’m back here in Sardinia, I hear that Roberto died a short while ago when out paddling his newly bought kayak.

He went out with a group of friends, but after an hour they decided to return, as the weather got much rougher than they had bargained for. On the return trip Roberto paddled last, at a distance of circa 50m, and at some point he disappeared. His friends searched for his as they best could in the waves, but had to give up, paddle back and sound the alarm.

The search teams located Roberto’s kayak fairly quickly, capsized but with the paddle inside. They later found his hat and a shoe. The body of Roberto was only found the next day at some distance.

Apparently, the cause of death hasn’t been determined yet. There are two hypotheses around. One is that he capsized in the waves and got separated from the kayak before he was able to reenter, the other that he had a heart attack, either before or after a capsize. He had a heart attack four years ago.

Roberto was 52, and leaves his wife and two children of 14 and 15.

Of course it is not the first we hear such a story, and probably not the last either, but the impact is so much stronger when its somebody you’ve met and knew, even if only superficially.

I still have Roberto’s number on my phone, and had planned to call him as I approached Cagliari, so we could meet for a chat. I didn’t manage to meet him last year as I passed Cagliari. Now I have to search for a cemetary instead.

Its all very sad.

Franceso and i had planned to paddle to Cala Goloritzé in the Golfo di Orosei yesterday, and we got up early and set off fetching kayaks at a local camping where Francesco keeps par of his gear, and then on the road to Santa Maria Navarrese.

We launched in calm weather, a force 2 scirocco (SE) and some following waves and swells, but with a forecast of up to force 4 during the afternoon.

The paddle northwards went easy enough, and we passed Pedra Longa and the Grotta della Columba without problems, but as we approached Capo Monte Santu the going got a bit rougher. The Capo Monte Santu is cape with a 200m vertical rock wall that drops straight into the sea for some 2-3km, and there are almost always difficult winds and waves there.

We had a bit of a fight with waves and winds around the cape. Personally I find following swells and waves quite difficult to navigate, as I have no visual forewarning of what is in arrival, but I think both of us found it a bit difficult there, as Francesco headed directly for the entrance to Porto Quao, which is a completely sheltered natural harbour on an otherwise not very welcoming coast.

We landed in Porto Quao and laid our gear out to dry in the sun. After a while we decided to abandon the attempt to reach Cala Goloritzé and instead enjoy the sun in our little sheltered corner, until the afternoon when there was a good chance the wind would wane a bit.

The little bay was as enchanted in the sun, so we made a little photo session. We took turns to climb the rocky cliffs around the bay to take photos of the other fooling around the sheltered area in kayak. It was hot and sunny, the rocks were steep and razor sharp with dense mediterranean vegetation, which for a nordic type like me translates to sunburn and totally scratched legs, but it was fun and we got some nice photos of our kayaks in the crystal clear waters of the Golfo di Orosei.

At about three thirty we got ready to return. As soon as we rounded the corner, we discovered that the wind was still a nice force 4, with swells of 1-2m but modest waves of less than 1m. It still took an effort to round Capo Monte Santu, and as we moved well away from the coast to avoid the choppy rebounding waves, we got separated and lost visual contact for extended periods.

Francesco knows his waters and was both much more confident and a lot faster than me, so he was well ahead of me most of the time and probably closer to the rock wall than I wanted to be. In any case I lost him for quite some time, and at the same time didn’t feel I had the resources to actively look for him, as the wind and waves gave me plenty to work with.

I wouldn’t say I was in trouble there, but it wasn’t easy going. The first hour took all my effort and concentration, but I did handle it in a controlled and steady way. My own feeling is that I was quite close to the limits of my abilities in a kayak, but not outside.

In the end all went well, and as soon as we were around the cape we found each other again, and we paddled together for the next couple of hours back to Santa Maria Navarrese. I was quite tired in the end, more mental tiredness than physical.

We had a coffee at Santa Maria Navarres and drove home to yet another dinner thet couldn’t be beat, and then off to bed. I slept well.

I arrived in Cardedu in the afternoon on Saturday, and I was hardly in the door at Francesco’s before he declared that we were going fishing in kayak that afternoon. It is like that at Francesco’s house. It is very hard not to end up paddling most of the time.

We went to a local camping where his trailer were, picked it up and were off to Cardedu beach for a late afternoons paddling and fishing.

Francesco does a lot of fishing from his kayaks, and he has had some spectacular catches, including a 27kg “pesce luna”, which is a tropical fish not normally found in Sardinian waters.

We didn’t catch a thing. Francesco got a few “tracine” but they either got off the hook or were let off because they were undersize.

Anyway, when we got home after sunset, Elisa, Francesco’s wife, had made homemade pesto with basil from the garden, so we had another dinner that couldn’t be beat nonetheless. Food is good here in Sardinia, and much of grows literally on people’s doorsteps.

I should have written something on the blog then, but we ended up in front of Francesco’s computer looking at photos, websites and leaflets, and at eleven I just collapsed on my bed.

Francesco is a person who prefers to stay active rather than taking half a day off, so Sunday morning we were off again to take a couple of Poles out paddling at nine. Just as we were about to leave, the camping where they stayed called to say that they were still too drunk from the evening before, and that they weren’t going. We had, however, recruited a few others for the excursion on the beach the day before, so we left anyway.

On the beach, only one of the promised three persons had showed up, so the group ended up being of just one persons. After a bit of instructions, communicated in an unholy mix of Italian, German and English, we paddled down the coast for a while, and back again. It was a quite calm day, with a light scirocco and only some modest swells to deal with.

Back on the beach we had a beer with our German paddler, and they and Francesco arranged for next years exchange of German beer for Sardinian red wine.

In the afternoon we went sight-seeing in most of Ogliastra on motorbike. We drove to the Lido di Orri, to Santa Maria Navarrese, over the small mountains and down to Pedra Longa, then back and on to Baunei and up to the Golgo plain behind the Cala Goloritzé and the Cala Sisine I visited last year in kayak. We spent some time there, throwing pebbles into a 270m vertical hole, visiting a 16th century church, and hanging around the local bar.

We then returned almost to Santa Maria Navarrese, before going to Triei where they had a city-wide celebration of the ancient traditions, with people dressed in traditional clothes, stands serving local specialities and many old houses open for visitors. The city also sported a large number of murals, some quite interesting.

There we met some friends of Francesco, who took us up the hills to see an ancient nuraghe and a “tomba dei giganti”. The nuraghe had been really big, but it was in bad shape, mostly a ruin, and it wasn’t even indicated on the street signs like other local sights. Francesco’s friend told us the it had been quite different when he was a kid, almost complete, but it had been ruined on purpose by somebody over 20 years ago. It is so sad to hear than something which has been standing for thousands of years has then been ruined so recently, but of course, human stupidity and ignorance know few bounds if any.

The “tomba dei giganti” is another type of neolithic monument, traditionally thought to be a tomb, but who knows what it was. This one consisted of a covered passage with the remains of an elongated mound, with a crescent shaped series of stones on one side. According to our guide it had the shape of a bull’s head when seen from above.

It was getting late, and we had a pizza appointment at Cardedu Marina a 8, so we had to head back homewards. We arrived half an hour late, found nobody there but desided to eat anyway as we were rather hungry and heard on the phone that the others were coming anyway. Not as soon as we had ordered did they show up anyway.

Today Francesco and I got up early and we’re off for a paddle to Goloritzé and back, which is about 30km along some of the most beautiful coastline in Sardinia, which is saying a lot as most of the coast here is breathtaking.

It is hard to find a bit of time for blogging, as Francesco likes to keep his guests on a tight schedule. After all, you can always sleep when you get old(er)

It also helps that there is no mobile coverage in or near his house, keeping me offline unless I go and sit in the orchard or between the vines.

I’ve spent today exploring a few North Italian motorways.

The A4 from Venice towards Milan is nice and spacious, but it was much too wet for my taste. It rained on and off for most of the time, and the lateral decorations are mostly urban and industrial in nature. All in all practical but not very inspiring or pleasing to the eye.

The A21 was better in many ways. It was definitely warmer and dryer, with mostly sunshine and very little rain. On the negative side, it is rather narrow, only two lanes, and the lorry drivers seemed very chatty, insisting on driving side by side, thus slowing down both lanes. The lateral decorations were non-descript, mostly cultivated fields. All in all not an unpleasant experience but neither one than remains with you for long.

The last motorway was the A7, which was completely different. It was nice, dry and warm. Still narrow, but the lorry drivers seemed more focused on their own affairs, and definitely less chatty. The best part was the side decorations. I must say, this is one motorway where they had thought about the surroundings, striving to create a complete experience and not just trying to be functional. The motorway curved in and out between small forested mountains, delightfully interspersed with little towns and traversed by small streams. It was a pleasure driving there, and in the end it didn’t matter much that the curves forced us to go slower. Italian traffical creativity at its best. More motorways like the A7 I’d say.

So, if you have plans of spending your summer holidays on the Italian motorways, I can heartily recommend the A7. It was by far the best experience of they day.

Now, I don’t know why anybody would want to spend their holidays on the motorways, but people seem to do it a lot, and who am I to judge.

Share and enjoy.

I just noticed that Skim Kayaks have a new model out, the Skim Dipper. They haven’t put up much information about it yet, except that it is 536cm long (17ft 7in) and 51.5cm wide (20.3in). There are some photos linked from the front page.

It seems to be a middle thing between the Skim Dex and the Skim Distance, in the sense that it looks a lot like them on the photos and the dimensions are somewhere inbetween.

I think it will be a welcome addition to the Skim family, suitable for those who want a more spacious boat than the Dex, but find the Distance too long to handle.

Here in Italy the Distance has another problem, which has to do with its handling on cars, not on water. Italian transport regulations only allows cars to transport objects shorter than 130% the length of the car, which means that to put a Skim Distance of 588cm on a car, the car must be at least 453cm long. Most Italians have shorter cars than that, so a Skim Distance is simply not an option here for most people. They can’t take it anywhere. The Skim Dipper might well be (if only you could get a Skim kayak here in Italy, which you can’t).

I’ll have to see if I can get to try one in Copenhagen next month or at the Stockenträffen in late August.

Photo from Skim Kayak’s web site.

I have now booked the ferry to Sardinia for the last leg of my circumnavigation of the island. In a few days time I will push the Skim Distance back in the water exactly where I pulled it up last year, and finish what I set out to do last year.

On Friday I’m off on my motorcycle from Venice to Genova. The ferry departs in the evening, and the crossing to Arbatax takes some 16 hours, so I arrive there at noon on Saturday.

First stop is at Francesco Muntoni of Cardedu Kayak. He has the kayak and most of my gear stored, and he will help me return to Fertilia just as he helped me away from Fertilia last year.

I will do the remaining part of the journey alone, except that I will probably be joined in weekends by some of the many paddling friends I now have in Sardinia, all those I know from last year, from our visit in Easter this year, from the Vogalonga in Venice, and from the symposium recently in Bibione here in the Veneto region.

Once I’m in Cagliari, I will have to return to Cardedu to pick up the motorcycle and put the Skim Distance back in the shed, until we either find a permanent home for it (I know Francesco has a very good suggestion – he likes it ) or I find the time from family in Denmark and kayaking activities in Venice to do the circumnavigation of Sicily, which was part of the original plan and my original reason to come along in the first place.

I don’t have many specific plans for the final part of the journey, but everybody I’ve met says the last part is the most beautiful, though I have a hard time believing anything can beat the splendour of the Golfo di Orosei.

In the Oristano area I want to see the ruins of Tharros, an ancient Roman city, and I want to enter the Stagno di Oristano to see the flamingos there. I have never seen flamingos close up in the wild, and I’m not going to miss that chance. Weather permitting I would also like to have a look at the Isole Sulcitane in the SW corner of Sardinia. Then there’s the ruins of Pula, but they’re near Cagliari so it would be fairly easy to return there later.

I am so looking forward to this.