René Seindal

Yesterday I was paddling around Venice with a German couple and their daughter. The girl was almost mesmerised by the crabs scuttling around on the walls and steps on the rii, so daddy picked one up to show her, then put it down on the kayak so it could get on with its life.

I tried to get a photo of the crab on the kayak, but the camera wouldn’t obey, and I missed it.

At least I thought I missed it.  When I zoomed in a bit I found that I had caught the crab in mid jump

They’re restoring the back side of the Palazzo Ducale and the corresponding side of the Prigioni Nove, both facing the Rio Canonica. The Bridge of Sighs  connect these two buildings across the canal.

To get funds for the restauration works they have sold advertising rights to the façades being restored, and the sponsor have clad them in blue.

It makes a paddle down that rio an almost surreal experience, and even if the Bridge of Sighs is still visible, it just isn’t the same experience.  On the other hand, we  can hardly complain that the city is maintaining our common heritage.

I have a quite decent camera in my mobile phone, and often take photos where I go, but I also often forget to download them to the computer. I did that today, and here’s a selection of point-and-shoot photos from we left Denmark in early April until now here in Venice.

The phots are in chronological order, from April 2nd until May 14th.

We met this rather violent viking lorry somewhere in Germany – every surface was covered with painting of savage vikings murdering and pillaging. Notice the monk being attacked on the beach.

Its a bit tiring driving long hours, so I  had a nap on a lawn somewhere in France.

Fancy a nap with your head on this pillow?  We spotted it in a parked car in Port de la Selva in Spain.

At the symposium dinner they prepared a special Catalan drink which had to burn for a while before being drunk.

Paella is good – we shared this wiith a bunch of Sicilian friends, Nigel Dennis and one of his coaches.

This is a patisserie in Carcassonne, in the city below the walls.

This fellow we met at the markets in Nîmes. I smiled back and walked on

The Pont du Gard just outside Nîmes.

In Venice I found a place to stay in the city, and here is all my stuff in two Ikea bags as I wait for the vaporetto at Piazzale Rome.

The apartment is close to Campo S. Giacomo dell’Orio, which is a very cozy place.

There’s a small supermarket at S. Giacomo dell’Orio, and one day I found this fellow tied to the old well outside the shop.

There’s a small war going on Riva degli Schiavoni. The area is full of tourists, and therefore also of illegal immigrants selling counterfeit goods, like  designer bags and belts. The local shop keepers have put out signs warning people not to buy the counterfeit products, and complain loudly that the police don’t do anything.  The other day there were some policemen on the bridges, and the immigrants had moved somewhere else.

This is an Italian monument, but still with a fiece lion of St. Mark’s.

I know this guy who’s having and ice cream on the steps at Campo S. Stae. There’s a very nice gelateria in the Salizada S. Stae about 100m behind the church.

In the Salizada S. Stae there’s a house with model wind mills on all of the first floor. I have no idea why.

One day on the vaporetto stop returning from the Lido to Riva degli Schiavoni they had these huge water bags lying on a platform. It wasn’t clear why, but it might be a stress test of a new vaporetto platform.

I saw this beagle at St. Mark’s. He’s French, thirteen years old and in fine health.

Walking down the Salizada S. Stae you hardly notice the campanile towering over your head.

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.

Flickr.com has a way of assigning “interestingness” to photos. I’m not quite sure how they do it. The algorithm probably includes the number of views, number of times it is marked a favourite and the number of comments, and it seems, also who views, marks or comments the photo and when and how fast they do it, but there is very little information about the details on the net.

The algorithm does seem to work well, at least it has picked some of the best of my photos, and the overall best on Flickr are usually really really great photos.

Here are the most “interesting” from my photo collection on flickr.

This photo is taken in Spain in 2006 and it has turned out quite remarkable. It is, however, more a matter of chance than of skill. It is taken with a Pentax Optio W10 mounted on a suction cup mono pod on the foredeck of the kayak, and set to take a photo every 20 seconds. After the paddle up and down the coast from Llança in Catalonia I had hundreds of photos on the camera, including this one of a wave breaking over the foredeck. The photo was used on the front page of the catalogue of my local kayak pusher and is still the top photo on their web site.

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I’m back in Venice now, in the camping getting the last things ready before a group of Danes arrives on Sunday for a week of magic Venetian paddling.

I was lucky enough to find myself a vacant window seat on the right side of the plane. The airport of Venice is built on the edge of the the lagoon, and the approach is almost always from the south, so the right side of the plane has a fantastic view of the lagoon and Venice itself, while the left side has a less spectacular view of the Po valley.

Photos taken with a mobile phone through an airplane window aren’t the greatest, but I had no other camera on me and the hostess wouldn’t let me open the window

The “gronde” of the southern lagoon, an area I still haven’t explored in kayak.

Venice with the Giudecca island and the minor islands south of the city.

Venice with its modern (1930s) additions of the Tronchetto island and the Barrier, officially named “Ponte della Libertà”.

The Barrier and the uninhabited San Secondo island.

Murano and San Michele, with a bit of Venice on the right and the abandoned Campalto island in front.

The northern lagoon near the airport. The “Tessera Canal” in front with Isola di Tessera and Murano to the far right, and Carbonera island in the centre-left. Carbonera used to house a gun battery, but it is now abandoned like so many other “marginal” lagoon islands.

The barene at the airport runways, with the violet flowers in bloom. The airport is built on a part of the lagoon, which used to be like this.

I have uploaded a bunch of photos from the last leg of my circumnavigation of Sardinia to Flickr.

I have taken a lot fewer photos this time, and they’re not as good as last year. With regard to photographing it does make a huge difference paddling alone. Often taking photos is part of a social interaction which doesn’t take place when you’re alone.

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.

My good friend Francesco Muntoni who runs Cardedu Kayak in Sardinia, has started uploading photos from his home island to flickr.

A month from now I will be down there again, to visit Francesco and to paddle the magnificent coast.

Francesco is currently the custodian of my Skim Distance, seen here at Porto Quau in the Golfo di Orosei natural reserve.

Who can resist this little fellow

My wife brought him home from Berlin this Christmas.