Category: Kayaking

  • Mare Nostrum Project

    A couple of French kayakers are on a journey along the northern side of the Mediterranean, a 10.000km trip from Gibraltar to Istanbul. We hope to host them when they arrive here in Venice in a few weeks time. They’re currently half way up the Italian east coast. Mare Nostrum Project.

  • Valley Pintail – the very last

    Valley Pintail – the very last

    In July I was on a brief visit to Canada and Michigan where I participated in the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium. On one of the tours I was on there was a beautiful three-part almost golden Valley Pintail, and the owner, a local coach named Belinda, let me have a go in it in…

  • Kayaking anniversary in Venice

    Kayaking anniversary in Venice

    At this time, five years ago, I came to Venice for the first time to kayak. I had only been to Venice a two previous occasions, and only for short one day visits. Being married at the time to an Italian, most holidays would automatically go to Italy, and I had been searching for interesting…

  • First paddle of the year in Venice

    First paddle of the year in Venice

    Between this and that it was late January before we got the kayaks out on the canals of Venice. It was before the cold set in, so there was no snow or ice on the canals. We had much of the city to ourselves, as most other boat people in Venice are having a slow…

  • Stupid things you do …

    Stupid things you do …

    Every once in a while you do something silly, only discover afterwards that your “good fun” could have had other consequences. In November last year there was an alert for a high tide in Venice. Nothing extreme, a forecast of 115cm which will flood mayby 20% of the city with at most 20cm of water,…

  • Kayaking gear

    Kayaking gear

    Getting ready for a tour, controlling the essential gear.

  • The local parking lot

    The local parking lot

    On the Certosa island, car free but with kayaks.

  • Paddling Planet errors

    There are a lot of errors on Paddling Planet recently, mostly HTTP errors 404 (Not Found) and 409 (Conflict), but they all relate to Blogger and change all the time, so I assume the fault is at Blogger.

  • Circumnavigation of Sicily

    The circumnavigation of Sicily won’t be this time. Progress has been much too slow, and the time I have will not allow us to recover the delay. We’ve done about 125km in a week, and we’ve only just made it to the north side of the island. Another purpose of the journey, for me, was…

  • Periplo della Sicilia

    Il periplo della Sicilia non si fa questa volta. Il progresso è stato troppo lento, e il tempo disponibile non permette di ricuperare. In una settimana abbiamo fatto sui 125km, e siamo appena arrivati sulla costa nord dell’isola. Un altro scopo del viaggio, per me, era di rivedere tanti amici siciliani, soprattutto nel palermitano e…