This guy just went up and down a short stretch of lagoon canal behind the Vignole, training in a little corner sheltered from the winds of the day.

(this is an old post I found un-published on the blog – its more than a year old – better late than never, I guess)

I haven’t done as much about Venetian rowing – voga alla veneta – this winter as I would have liked, but today we went rowing in the Gondolone, a huge gondola type boat for eights oarsmen.

We paddled from the club at Ca’ Bianca on the Lido to Rialto for a snack, and back again.

Today we had the end of season event at the Diadora rowing club, where I should have spent a lot more time this summer.

Most of the morning was taken up by ‘social’ regattas for each of the types of rowing practiced in the club, both ‘English’ rowing (backwards in various types of boats), and Venetian rowing, voga alla veneta (standing up looking forwards).

The Venetian race was held in sandoli a quattro. The eight boats were same boats as are used in the official regattas throughout the summer. They’re all numbered and differently coloured, so they’re easier to distinguish at a distance. I was in the violet boat, number 3, with Silvia, Rollo and Alessandro.

Silvia is an accomplished rower, who have participated in races many times, so she knew exactly what to do and when. The rest of us were all more or less beginners, so Silvia’s coaching was much needed. I was a prua, in the front.

Getting ready

Fitting the forcolas on the boats.

Wading around on the boats.

Launching

Getting everybody on board

Waiting

Getting the hang of the boat

Spectators

Waiting for the start

Milling about …

in one of the most beautiful spots on this globe

Still waiting for the start

The last boats are coming out

Racing

Well, no photos, as I was rowing like a madman having Silvia in the back shouting orders at us continuously

The start didn’t come off perfectly, but we managed to keep up with the leading boats, and after the first 500m we rounded the buoy second. Silvia was shrewd enough to move us into the canal along the Lido, as the tidal flow there would help us. At that time we were second, so I don’t know what the boats behind us did. I assume they did the same.

As we reached the finishing line I was completely out of breath and my legs were shaking, but Silvia paced us on mercilessly, and we finished the race in good order between the firsts.

Pulcini in kayak

My friend Marco teaches kayaking to a handful of small children, and they participated in the day’s events too.

What better place can there be in the world for learning to kayak?

Marco needs to confer with the judges.

The race has begun

and the winner arrives triumphant.

Awards

Green flags for third place

White flags for second place

Red flags for first place

Your’s truly got a red flag

The kayak chicks got a medal each.

The entire youth lineup of the Diadora

Socialising

Could there possibly be a more stupendous place to hang out after a race?

Clearing up

Chief coach Lino Farnea didn’t like his oars in disorder.

Last year I started rowing Venetian style, voga alla veneta, where you stand up in the boat, looking forward, pushing on the oar to move forward. I continued Venetian rowing when I returned to Venice this spring, but then work took over, and I haven’t been rowing for several months now.

Yesterday I finally went rowing again at the Canottieri Diadora. My friend Enzo, who has an orchard neighbouring the camp site where I start my kayaking tours from, had asked me to go rowing Friday morning. When I went to the club, I met Krystyna, an Austrian girl who has been rowing at the Diadora for three years.

Consequently, we went all three of us in a sandalo for three, towards Venice. Enzo, the more experienced rower, a poppa (in the back); Krystyna, the smallest of us, a prua (in the front); and me in the middle.

It took a little while before I quite got the hang of it again, as we crossed the lagoon south of Venice. The waves weren’t much, maybe half a foot, but still enough to make me feel unstable stading up in a rather narrow boat in the middle of nowhere.

Conditions were calmer when we arrived at the Giudecca island, but then we had to cross the Canale Giudecca, one of the busiest and most wavy places in Venice. It was definitely difficult, but we got across safe and sound, passed though one of the smaller canals on the other side, and entered the lower part of the Canal Grande, between the Accademia bridge and the Madonna della Salute church.

The Canal Grande was quite calm and rowing was easy. We got in a bit of a squeeze between some gondolas near the Rialto Bridge, but nothing serious. Its always a busy place, not matter what kind of boat you’re taking there.

We moored illegally on a private mooring near the Rialto Markets and went for a snack. Enzo knew a good little place, and on the way we passed the fish markets. I’ve never really spent any time there in the morning before, always just rushed past on my way to work, so I took some quick photos on the way, without losing sight of the other two, who were clearly a lot more attracted to the prospect of vino and cicchetti.

The little place Enzo took us to were completely devoid of tourists, which is quite rare in Venice, the only other guests being a handful of elderly men drinking wine and reading newspapers.

A door in a nearby calle had a forcola for a handle.

We returned the same way we came. First under the Rialto Bridge, then down the Canale Grande, through the Rio San Trovaso, across the Canale Giudecca, through the Giudecca and across the lagoon to the club at Ca’ Bianca on the Lido.

The trip down the Canale Grande wasn’t that difficult, except for a bit of traffic. There was plenty of space for the oars most of the time. In the smaller canals its more difficult, as we had to be alert and pull in the oar each time we passed a moored boat, a stair, a pole or something else restricting our space. The Canale Giudecca was as difficult on the return journey as on the way out, but we made it across anyway. Crossing there is quite an exercise in balance, and the conditions weren’t even bad, compared to what I’ve seen there while kayaking.

The return across the lagoon was the most challenging part. The wind had picked up a bit, so we had it from the front left, and Enzo moved me to the the back position, a poppa, but as I had to push hard to keep the boat on track, I soon managed to dislodge the oarlock, the forcola. As we were entering a canal near S.Clemente the time was not for shifting positions, and I continued with a still more wobbly forcola until we were safe across the canal. Then Enzo moved back a poppa and we rowed rather slowly back to the Diadora, as the forcola would no longer stay put if put under pressure.

Back at the club eight very colourful sandoli were moored. They are eight of the ten sandoli the city of Venice has for the official regattas during the summer. When not in use for the regattas, the various rowing clubs of Venice and surroundings can borrow them for training or use in unofficial regattas.

The boats are at the Diadora for the end of season event, which includes a club regatta in sandoli for four.

Last Sunday I was supposed to meet with Angela Nickerson, an American travel writer I’ve met via the social networking site Twitter, to talk about Venice and kayaking and much else. Two other ‘Tweeps’ were invited too, Nan McElroy and Monica Ceserato.

Nan McElroy is an American travel author who lives in Venice for some years. Venetian rowing, Voga alla Veneta, has become her great passion, and she is very active in promoting Voga alla Veneta in Venice. Her latest endeavour is the cultural association VIVA which has the aim promoting Voga alla Veneta and ameliorating the conditions for traditional rowing boats in Venice, where motorised traffic have made rowing much more difficult.

Monica Ceserato is Venetian from the mainland, where she runs a B&B in the small town of Malcontenta, 15 minutes by bus from Venice, and does Italian classes for foreigners and English classes for locals. Monica came along with her British husband Chris and their son Pasquale.

When I arrived at the meeting point, the bar Al Timon in Cannaregio, I found a message on my phone that Angela had been taken ill so the meeting was cancelled. However, both Monica and I had made the journey, so we decided to meet anyway to chat and get to know each other.

Nan had promised Angela a tour in a new boat VIVA had acquired, a beautiful sandolo buraneo. The sandoli forms a whole family of traditional Venetian boats, mostly from around the northern lagoon, and the sandolo buraneo – or rather the sandolo grando da buranèi – was used around the island of Burano, some 8km north of Venice, for fishing and transportation of goods and persons. Now it is mostly used, painted black and decorated beyond recognition with seats and figurines, for a gondola-like tourist service in the city of Venice. The sandolisti sit at their stations throughout the city centre, calling out ‘gondola, gondola’ at passing tourists, though their boat is nothing like a gondola to even an untrained eye.

Nan decided to do the boat ride anyway, without Angela, so she went to find a rowing mate and fetch the boat. After a while she returned with Amelia in the boat.

There was quite a bit of current in the canal, due to the changing tide, and the two girls rowing had to work hard. They rowed us through the Cannaregio area, down the Rio della Misericordia and the Rio Noale to the Canal Grande.

From there we continued towards the Rialto Bridge.

Even though I haven’t rowed much this summer, Nan let me have a go at rowing a bit down the Canal Grande. I’m in no way an expert rower, but it worked OK and it was good fun.

With Amelia back at the front oar we went up the Rio S. Polo, Rio S. Agostino, Rio S. Giacomo dell’Orio and Rio S. Zan Degolà to Canal Grande, across and down the Rio S. Maddalena where the current played games with the boat again.

We stopped at S. Maddalena for cicchetti and a drink.

Monica, husband and son said goodbye here and walked to Piazzale Roma to catch a bus back to the mainland where they live. I continued with Nan and Amelia to moor the boat at its spot in the Rio della Madonna dell’Orto.

Unfortunately a motorboat had usurped the boat’s mooring. While we waited for the owner of the motorboat to return, the girls spend a bit of time finding an place to unload the stuff on board. Just as we had given up waiting and had started to move the motorboat to another mooring, the owner appeared to remove his boat.

Amazingly, the tour was a first for Monica and her family. Though Monica is Venetian by birth, she’s from the mainland, and none of them had ever toured Venice in a boat before.

That part of the experience wasn’t new to me, as I spend more time in Venice in a boat than on land, but the tour was a first for me too. It is the first time ever I have rowed Venetian style in the city of Venice and on the Canal Grande.

Links

Angela Nickerson:

• Gypsy Guide
• Twitter

Nan McElroy:

• Living Venice
• VIVA
• Twitter

Monica Ceserato:

• Faronhof B&B
• Tutor of English and Italian
• Twitter

Rowing a gondola at high tide requires some special skills. The higher water makes for lower bridges, and a gondola is not a low profile boat that’ll just go under anyway. The gondoliere have to do all sorts of weird manoeuvres to get the boat under the lowest of the bridges.

Crouching

The simplest way of lowering the height of the gondola is for the gondoliere to crouch on the back deck, while he keeps the oar straight backwards, propelling the boat with a sculling movement. The forcola, or oarlock, has a bend exactly to allow the operation where the oar is almost parallel to the boat.

Another example of the crouching gondoliere, same place near Santa Maria Formosa:

Edging

If the bridge is very low, the gondoliere might have to edge to boat to lower the stern ferro, which is the highest point of a gondola. He will do so by stepping over to the right side of the boat, in front of the forcola. From that position he will scull the boat forwards. On many gondolas the stern ferro is on hinges, so it can be flipped down. If the bridge is too low for even the bow ferro the pass, he will have to edge the boat even more, by telling the passengers to all sit on the right side of the boat.

From Rio del Mondo Nuovo, near Santa Maria Formosa:

Lying down

At times the gondoliere will have to pass a bridge where there’s just only enough space to squeeze through, and to make sure that he will not get stuck, with ferri scraping the underside of the bridge, he will lie down on the back deck of the gondola, and push it along with his hands until the stern ferro is well through the passage.

From Rio San Provolo, S.Marco:

And another case from Rio della Maddalena, Cannaregio:

There are many rowing regattas in and around Venice during the summer, with various kinds of boats participating.

The Regata di Mestre is the first of the season, and it was held last Sunday, May 10th.

My initial plans were to watch it from a kayak, but Mother’s Day intervened causing friends to stay home, so in the end I walked to Sacca San Girolamo in the Cannaregio area, from where I had a good view of the canal where the race had to pass.

Mestre is a city on the mainland, but the race started from Murano north of Venice, touched the NW corner of the city in the Cannaregio area, before heading towards towards San Giuliano on the mainland, on the outskirts of Mestre.

I was watching at the mid point, so I didn’t get to see the finish, and I still don’t know who won.

The Canottieri Diadora is the Venetian rowing club where I have been taking voga alla veneta lessons recently. It is a very old rowing club, with a very particular history.

The club was founded in 1898 in Zara in Dalmatia, modern day Zadar in Croatia, by a small group of rowers of mostly Venetian descent. Zara had been under Venetian rule from 1409 until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, and a good part of the population were descendents of settlers from the Veneto region in Italy. They called the club S. C. Diadora, which is the Venetian name for the city of Zara.

Zara was, however, under Austro-Hungarian rule at the time, and the Venetian club was not welcome in the Austrian rowing federation, so the club had great difficulty participating in races. It took a long strenous battle, but in the end the club managed to become associated with the “Reale Rowing Club Italiano”, after which the S. C. Diadora could participate in national Italian races, and later in international events under the Italian flag.

In 1907 the club won their first medals at the internation regattas of Trieste, which was followed by many others in national and international events, including national Italian championships and an bronze medal in Mens Eights at the 8th Olympic games in Paris in 1924.

The Second World War put an end to all this. Many club members died in the war, and many others fled Zara for Italy, as the city was all but destroyed. It was the end of the S. C. Diadora.

However, in 1961 a group of old members got together in Ancona in Italy, and participated in an event there under the blue/white colours of the S. C. Diadora.

The following year a group of Venetian rowers, together with some of the old members of the club in Zara, now living in Venice, met on the Lido di Venezia and reformed the club as the Circolo Canottieri Diadora, with seat on the Lido di Venezia, and the Diadora has been there ever since. Other Venetian rowing clubs gave a hand in establishing a new fleet for the reformed Diadora.

As basically a new club, competitive results didn’t come immediately. In the 1960s results were few, but things got better in 1970s and 1980s, with many regional and some national wins. The activities were extended to racing kayaks in the early 1970s, and more slowly, to voga alla veneta.

The first Venetian style boat in the club was a veneta a quattro, which was given to the club by the rowing club of the railway workers. Not a competitive boat, it became nevertheless a means of training, and in 1973 the Diadora won the Historical Regatta in a veneta on load from the Querini rowing club in Venice. The Diadora team consistently won the Historical Regatta for several years in a row. One of the members of the team was Lino Farnea, who still coaches rowers at the Diadora at the age of 70.

The mid-70s was a time of revival of voga alla veneta in both Venice and on the mainland. The Vogalonga, started in 1975, was a part of this revival. Many of the city’s rowing clubs gradually switched their focus from English style rowing to Venetian style rowing, and so did the Diadora. Consequently, at the Diadora it is now possible to row English style, kayak and row Venetian style, both competitively and recreationaly.

The Diadora now has a fleet of several mascarete, a gondolone and a caorlina, and has access to the municipal fleet of racing boats for use in the municipal regattas which are held at various places in the lagoon each summer.

Lino Farnea is coaching still at the Diadora, and also at the Scuola Navale F. Morosini at Sant’Elena, and he is often a referee at the municipal regattas.

Yesterday I had my first real lesson in Voga alla Veneta, the Venetian style of rowing standing up. I went out with Lino, one of the coaches at the Canottieri Diadora on the Lido di Venezia, in a mascareta like the other two times I have tried it.

The first two times I’ve tried to row Venetian style, together with Enzo, I was always in the front position, a prua, and I automatically went there again, but Lino sent me to the stern, a poppa.

The stern position is more difficult because the rower a poppa is in charge of steering, and therefore has to know various maneouvres to turn left and right, do sideways movement, turn on the spot and much more.

Before we started, Lino changed and adjusted my forcola. Now, if anybody suffered from the belief that the forcola is just a piece of wood to hold the oar in place, they’re wrong. Adjusting a forcola is a fine art. The lower part of it doesn’t just fit into the holes on the side board of the boat. The holes are too large, and wedges had to be hammered in to keep the forcola in the desired position while rowing. By placing the wedges differently, the forcola can be made to lean outwards or inwards, forwards or backwards, and be placed at different heights. I can’t remember all the details, the explanation came rather fast in Venetian dialect, but outwards leaning gives better control but less speed, inwards leaning less control but more speed. Forward leaning was for racing. Being a beginner mine was outwards leaning, and rather high, as I’m taller than most of the locals.

We started rowing in two, but fairly soon Lino just sat down watching me. He corrected a lot of little details of how I stood in the boat, how I shifted weight back and forth and how I held the oar. This was more or less what I had expected, as Enzo had asked Lino to teach me the correct position for rowing Venetian.

However, without Lino rowing on the left side of the boat, with me rowing alone on the right side of the boat, we started going in circles. Its like doing only sweep strokes on one side in a kayak. There was a bit of wind, and like a kayak the mascareta wants to turn into the wind, ánd with the two things combined there was very little control of where the boat wanted to go.

Lino then started to teach me a return stroke used by the gondolieri to keep the boat on course. I believe it is called a stagare, or stalìr, and it turns the boat to the right, but it is made as the blade returns after a forward stroke. At first I didn’t understand what the stroke was supposed to do, and consequently I performed miserably, but as understanding grew it got better, and after a while I could, with a lot of concentration and quite a few cases of dropping the oar from the forcola, mostly control the direction we were going.

The stroke he taught me is rather hard to describe. On a normal forward stroke you put the blade in the water in a vertical angle, the lean on the oar, turn your wrists and the end of the stroke, and when moving your weight back on the back foot, the oar returns forwards with the blade parallel to the water, either out of the water or sliding through at the surface. A forward stroke with no correction will send the boat turning left in a small circle, and in fact it is not called a forwards stroke in Venetian, it is called a premere, pushing.

The stroke to keep the boat going straight or even right, is made on the return movement, which is inactive in the simple forward stroke. Instead of turning the blade parallel with the surface on the return, it is turned a little bit more, so it bites into the water, while applying a downwards pressure on the oar handle with the left hand. It works a bit like a rudder but with the oar more horizontal than vertical. It has to be made very delicately to work. The angle of the blade, the pressure on the handle and the return movement of the blade has to be precisely coordinated and carefully measured, or the oar will drop from the forcola. The forcola gives a firm base for a forwards stroke, but when applying pressure on the return there is only a tiny little tap to keep the oar from dropping out, so the downwards pressure is all important and has to counter the downwards movement of the blade in the water precisely.

It took me at least half an hour of deep concentration and many mistakes to get some kind of grasp on it, but at the end it was a great sensation getting the feeling of controlling the boat, even with this very alien style of rowing. Just as I started to feed I had it, my performance declined, the boat veered and I kept dropping the oar. In my eagerness and concentration I had forgot time, and I had been rowing for at least 45 minutes alone and I was very tired. After maybe an hour on the water, we rowed to boat back in unison, which was suddenly so incredibly easy compared to rowing the boat alone.

When I jumped on the bridge back at the club, my legs shook under me. I was that tired.

I’ll be hanging around Venice for at least another week, so there should be time to do a few more lessions of Voga alla Veneta. For now, I have an appointment on monday morning, still with Lino.

My little voga alla veneta adventure continues, at a slow but accelerating pace. I haven’t had a chance to try it again as work paddling around Venice with tourists have taken almost all my time, but today Enzo gave me a call and asked if I wanted to try again today. I threw down a quick lunch, way to quick to be decent here in Italy, jumped on my motorbike and sped down the Lido to the “Canottieri Diadora” where Enzo rows.

I arrived at the club just as Enzo was coming back in with another newbie. He jumped out of the mascareta and I jumped in, and off we went.

Even though I have only tried it once before, the basics I learned last time returned immediately: the position of the feet, the hold on the oar and the twisting movement of the wrist to release it from the water without dropping it from the forcola.

We rowed south towards the little island of Poveglia, which I passed only a week ago with a group of Danish paddlers. Poveglia has a past as a lazzareto, which is a place where ship crews were put in quarantine if decease was suspected aboard, and the ruins of the hospital is still there, though in a rather poor state.

Poveglia is cut in two by a small canal, and we stopped there to have a look. Most of the buildings are overgrown, and bits and pieces of hospital equipment are still lying around under the vegetation, though anything of value has been taken away ages ago.

On the other side of Poveglia we met Angelo, also from Canottieri Diadora, obviously having a break, sitting down on his mascareta. After a short chat he agreed to join us on the return trip, but since he was rowing alla valesana, with two oars crossed, he was faster than us. My lack of rowing skills might also have been a factor

The whole process of rowing standing is working better now, shifting balance from one foot to the other, as the weight is used to push the oar through the water, coordinated with arms and wrists to control the entry, passage and release of the blade from the water. Naturally, I still drop the oar from the forcola regularly, but I did manage to do some decent stretches with a decent efficiency without looking completely silly all the time.

Back the the club we took the boat out of the water, using an electric crane, and washed it well.

Shortly after, one of the club’s instructors came in, and he gave me an appointment for tomorrow morning at 8.30 for a proper lesson in voga alla veneta.

Now I only need to learn the dialect and buy a pair of flashy sunglasses, and I will be absolutely indistinguishable from the natives