Tuffo di Capodanno

1/1/2014

After I had written my post yesterday and resolved myself to sleeping in a boat garage, I tried one last time to call Antonio Gallella, the president of the local Lega Navale.

Sure, he would be happy to host me.  Ten minutes later, after walking through the downpour, I met him at the Lega Navale’s building.  He brought me a bag of bread and cheese and pear juice.  I got to to use their hot shower.  And I took cushions off of the couch to sleep like a king.

“Tomorrow, stay.  We celebrate the new year with Tuffo di Capodanno.  Come join us.”

Slow as my pace is, I’m ready to slow it down even more until my replacement paddle arrives.  I agreed to stay and join their celebration.

The celebration is a community event.  Around 11:00 the next morning, members of the Lega Navale, their friends, family, and a marching band showed up.

With great music and pomp the lot of us marched around the corner to the beach.  

An ambulance and a couple of paramedics waited there for us.

And those who were tough enough to take a lead role changed into bathing suits and ran into the sea.  I just wore my shorts.  We swam.

The sun poured its warmth on us and it was a wonderful day for a swim.  Apparently the others weren’t as acclimated, because before I really got into the fun of it, people were already rushing back out.

A bonfire roared.  Photographers practiced their art on family and the crowd, and everyone smiled.  The band resumed and we marched back to the Lega Navale for wine and cake.

Gifts were presented to everyone who swam including a t shirt, a certificate of accomplishment, and a bottle of wine.  As a guest I received my goodie bag first.  The president of the Lega Navale presented it very officialy with a speech and lots of people took pictures as I accepted the bag.

Tomorrow I kayak.  I’ll take the good cheer of Tuffo di Capodanno forward with me.



 

Day 91

12/31/2013

I paddled on flat water through the rain.  I am not yet accustomed to paddling more than a short distance with my storm paddle.  It’s at least half a knot slower over long distances than my former winged paddle.  My shoulders ached.

I shot past a purple rimed jelly fish  at least a foot in diameter.  I back paddled but it was diving and then away.

I pulled into Ciro marina.  Some fishermen helped me move my boat into a warehouse and told me I could spend the night in the clean fishing boat next to my kayak.

It was my understanding that the Lega Navale here would host me, but I haven’t seen anything except for a closed building.  I tried calling, but no answer.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep paddling with my spare, or take a break until another one arrives from my folks in America.  In the mean time though, I don’t have anywhere safe to leave my boat while I wait, so I press on.

It’s been pouring all evening.

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Nautical miles paddled: 8

Total since Naples: 391.5

Current location:  39.367848,17.13457

Day 90

12/30/2013

Yesterday, just as my day was ending, my paddle snapped.  Could I risk paddling without a spare?  I had another one in America.  I wondered if Nelo would be willing to replace the one that broke.  I doubted it.  Should I make another Greenland paddle?  If so, storm or full length?

I was in a city, Crotone.  It might be a while before I’m in a population center again.  It seemed like I should take advantage of the local infrastructure and replace it.

I asked the Lega Navale dock hand if I could stay a few days while I resolved the problem.  He wasn’t sure and would get back to me.

I walked to the boat repair garage and dry dock next door. With some difficulty, I explained to the manager that I wanted another paddle like the one I showed him.  Could I please use his tools to make it.

No, he would make it.  It wouldn’t be a problem.  In his shop he had to small white squarish plastic paddles that looked about right for a bathtub toy.  He would cut a piece of wood to connect them and I’d be on my way in no time.

“No!”  For a moment words failed me.  “Hydrodynamica importante.” I said. “Tutto millimeter importante. Io canoa Cipro, molti mile.” [Hydrodynamica important.  All millimeter important. I canoe Cyprus, many mile.]

We walked into the garage to look at his selection of wood.  It appeared as though it was entirely composed of pieces that he’d taken out of other boats of had washed up in the harbor.  Most of them had rusty nails jutting out.

“Cedar.  Where can we get cedar?”

“No.”

“If I get the wood can you do it?  I’ll give you instructions.”

“Come back in half an hour.  I’ll have it ready.  Two Euro.”  He told me.

“I don’t think it can be done in under eight hours.”  I tried.  He didn’t seem to understand that he was holding a work of art. “It’s very careful work.”

Maybe he did understand.  After all, I wasn’t very much of an artist.  He pointed out every blemish and mistake in the paddle.  Some happened when I was painstakingly carving the six sides into the wood at exact angles, and some were the results of various beatings it had taken since then.

I tried explaining my needs one more time, but he walked off muttering something about Americans.

I returned to the Lega Navale.  The president asked me if I would be leaving.  I said I didn’t know.  I had to figure out what I needed to do about my paddle.

“Today the weather is good.  Tomorrow it will rain.  I can call ahead to the next Lega Navale and tell them you’re coming.”  He said.

I was being politely asked to move along.

“So will you leave?”

“Sure.”

By the time I was packed and ready it was 10:00.  If I didn’t launch then I would lose my daylight window.  The dockhand approached me with a friend as I was making final preparations.

The friend spoke to me in what I think was French for a little while before I told him I’m American.

“Oh, American.  I can help you make a paddle.”  He said.

I showed him mine.

“I need to go back to my shop to make sure I have enough materials.  It will take a half an hour.  Can you wait?”

I couldn’t, not unless this would really work.  I had to find out.  “Do you have a band saw?”

He had a look that suggested he didn’t know what a band saw was.  It was the key to quickly manufacturing a paddle like mine.  “Yes, yes.”  He told me he had one.

He continued, “ But can you wait here while I check to make sure I have enough aluminum?”

I was fed up.  “I don’t get it.  Are you punishing me!?  You steal my things, again and again.  You break my paddle, and now, adding insult to injury, you torture me with insanity!”

I was on the water using my storm paddle and screaming loudly into the formidable and completely unforecast headwind.

“Yes, this is a punishment.”

“What for?”  I asked.

“Why can’t you just get in line like everybody else?  When you finished high school, did you go to college?  No, you went to study Judaism in a yeshiva and from there the IDF.  When you finally did go to college, did you pick a practical major?  No, you chose math even though you failed it in high school.  Apparently you had something to prove to yourself.  And when somehow you persevered the gauntlet, did you go get a job in your field of choice?  No, you went kayaking.  And now you have the gall to ask why this is happening to you.  You dug this grave, good luck paddling out of it.”

My shoulders ached.  My storm paddle was fine for a couple of hours of paddling on a lake.  I had never tested it in conditions.  I didn’t know how much the wind was slowing me down, but at two knots, I suspected that at least half a knot of the 1.5 reduction could be attributed to my paddle.

Grad school hadn’t gone so well.  My academic advisor suggested I pursue a career in something other than math.  Ranger school came with its own set of troubles.  My summer job as head lifeguard at a camp could have been worse, but they undoubtedly will not rehire me.

I was kayaking with piece of wood I cut myself on a freezing cold day  in a hole on the face of the earth feeling like I was at the end of my rope.

I put my small package of crackers down on my chafing skirt.  A wave washed over my deck and it was lost.

Little did I know, Jesus would save me.

I pushed forward into the wind.  I would not make it to my destination for the day.  In fact, I wanted very much to stop at the next opportunity.

I passed the mouth of a wide river,  I saw a factory in the distance along the banks.  Frigid water poured down my paddle onto my arms until I finished passing the mouth.*

Swampy scrubs grew thick behind a short beach.  A jeep drove along the beach, pulling ahead of me then stopping.  The driver loaded driftwood into the back, and then continued on his way to repeat the process.

It rained.  And kept on raining.

I saw a town far off.

I asked the driver, keeping pace with me, how far it would be.  I figured at least three or four miles.

“Uno kilometer.”  He called back over the clash of the surf.

It looked much farther.  But it wasn’t.  Before long I paddled around a bend and there was the beginning of the town above a long beach.

I took out near some fishing boats.

Walking up the beach I nearly puked from exhaustion.

I changed as quickly as I could into dry clothing and the shivering gradually subsided.

I leaned my kayak against a wall.  If not well hidden at least it was discrete.  And a fisherman thought it would be fine.**

I found a bar.  They didn’t have internet access, or even toilet paper to clean my glasses.  When the bartender saw me trying to clean them with a waxy napkin he handed me a real one.  I saw a poker game in back.  This was not a good place.

But I needed to sit and rest.  And as I did we began to talk.  A man treated me to a chocolate croissant.  We talked a little more.  The folk in the bar took out their smart phones to look at my blog.  One fellow looked up the next day’s weather for me.

We went to move my kayak and gear somewhere safer:  The churchyard.

Oh, and the people in the church were happy to let me stay in there warm guest apartment.  There was a hot shower.  The cubbies were full of food.  I cut up an onion and some garlic and made myself some spaghetti sauce on the stove.

I was warm, clean, and happy.  There were Jesus and Mary statues and pictures on every wall.  I wasn’t supposed to talk in the hallways.  But they made no effort to proselytize, which is more than I can say for chabad.  

When a couple of my hostesses made my bed, they did it with unparalleled speed and precision.  If bed making were a sport, they would have been allstars.

After lying in bed for twenty minutes, I sprinted to puke into the toilet.  I heaved but nothing came up.  It had been a long day.

It takes more than a shower, bed, and meal to get me to change religions.  I have enough troubles with my own peoples wild stories, I’m certainly not about to adopt someone else's.  But all the good will got me thinking about the fundamental concepts that our people share in common.

My ravings against the sea were left far behind.

*A Greenland storm paddle is much shorter than a traditional kayak paddle, and the paddling stroke is different. Doing it right means your arms get soaked. ~ed

**Don’t worry, it wasn’t stolen. 

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Nautical miles paddled: 10

Total since Naples: 383.5

Current location: 39.246224,17.109527

 

Day 89

Friday I settled in on a beach in Cap Rizzuto.  Some stairs wound up a steep bushy hill face that was behind the beach.  The people in the house at the top were friendly and all smiles, but that was the extent of there hospitality.

I charged my gear using an outlet towards the rear of their garden near the stairs.  I watched as a cloud front moved towards land sprinkling lightning into the sea.

A storm was coming.  I asked the owner of the house for permission to sleep under the shelter of the awning over his porch.  I explained that I could sleep in the rain since I had a bivi sack, but I prefered not to depend on it.

He agreed.  And after a Sabbath dinner by myself, I slept soundly.  

The rain never came.  And the next morning, the father of the owner of the house, who had been friendly the day before, told me to get.  I was allowed to be down at the beach, but not up near the house.

I didn’t know if this was because the family thought I had lied about the rain, or he just didn’t know that I had permission to be up on the patio, but he felt I had somehow betrayed him and I needed to be gone.

I paddled this morning into a headwind that steadily grew stronger.  I asked some fishermen on a boat if it would last all day, and they said it would get better in the afternoon.

The coast was a mix of cliffs and beaches.  The cliffs frequently proffered interesting rock gardens.  In some places stones broke the surface over a hundred feet out.

At the center of the bay there was a rocky outcropping.  At the top of that outcropping was square stone mansion with a drawbridge.  I suspect it was hundreds of years old.  On the point at the end of the bay there was a similarly old fortification and a lighthouse that looked out from over a squat cliff.

Under the cliff I sang a song.  When I finished I heard from above me more singing.  And not just one voice, a whole choir.  When I paddled farther away I saw a church up there.

After crossing a bay, I arrived in Crotone.  Crotone is the largest city I’ve been in since Regio Calabria. From the lighthouse I could already see the cluster of apartment buildings.

In the port I found a large Lega Navale with kids sailing tiny training sail boats into the port only moments after I made my own entrance.  The fellow who was in charge told me they had a hot shower and that I was welcome to use it.

The rule for my continued training used to be that I roll every time I go out.  Over time I have modified it.  I roll every time I go out if I know when my next hot shower will be.  Lately, I haven’t had that many opportunities.  But here in welcoming LNI, I could roll.

My paddle snapped.  The water was murky, but I saw the larger half float to the top while the blade and broken bit of shaft slowly began to sink.

I reached forward and released my homemade spare paddle from the bungees and deck lines that secured it.  I triumphantly finished the roll.  I completed a roll in which my paddle snapped, and felt like the stuff of legend.

I dumped myself out of the boat and tore my life jacket off.  Just as my blade disappeared into the murky depths of the port I dived down after it.

It was really cold down there.  I didn’t find it.  A true hero would have.

I swam back to my boat, flipped it upside down, entered it underwater, and rolled back up with my storm paddle, no longer a spare.

The showers here are really hot.  The people are very friendly.  I’ll sleep inside tonight with everything I could want in life, except for a spare paddle.

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Nautical miles paddled: 17

Total since naples: 373.5

Current location: 39.079587,17.13549

 

Day 88

12/27/2013

Yesterday force seven winds beat against the coast and howled between the masts all day.  The sea had transformed into a ferocious beast.

The sky was dark and the rain broke through in the evening and poured deep into the night.  But by morning, the sky cleared and the wind spent.  The sea was still a little rough, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

I launched and began my 22-mile paddle by crossing a three-mile bay.  There were small waves rolling across medium waves rolling across large waves.  They all seemed to be going in different directions at different times.

And sometimes, they all lined up in sets of towering waves.  One set of waves broke at the top just as I was up there and washed water over my skirt.  

My skirt was closed.  I think I found a way to reduce the chafing by rolling up the inverted tube so that my pants are below and not under it.  This has caused my pants to fall down twice now while exiting the cockpit, but underneath the skirt I can discretely remedy the situation.

I was bracing every few minutes and I had to pee but didn’t want to stop.

As I rounded a sheer cliff peninsula the waves grew ferocious.  Ahead of me I could see them, at least seven or eight feet high, breaking far away from the rocks and hurling white watery death against the cliffs.  If I got caught by one of those without my helmet and rocket pack I’d have a problem.  My helmet is in Tel Aviv and I don’t own a rocket pack.

I gave them a wide berth.  Once around the corner of the peninsula I found myself being jostled along and angled towards the cliffs.  I was not comfortable.  I expected the cliffs to continue along the coast for the rest of the day, so when I saw a beach in an inlet guarded by a medieval tower, I took the opportunity to get off the water.

The people in the house above the beach were happy to let me stay on the beach for the weekend, and while walking the roughly 10 kilometers to the super market, I found the friendly people at Pizzeria la Quercia, and they were happy to let me use their wifi connection.

Nautical miles paddled: 3

Total since Naples: 356.5

Current location:  38.898519,17.095483

 

12/25/2013

I slept in a boat and stored my gear in one of the ports buildings.  I wanted to store my boat inside also, but I was assured it would be safe where it was.

When I went to pack everything up in the morning, my computer, camera, spare batteries, and backup GPS had been stolen.

I told the port’s captain what had happened.  He had good news for me.  Everything was recorded on camera.  The fellow who had access to the camera however would only arrive in a few hours.

I took a nap.

Two hours later the captain woke me up.  He found my things.

We climbed up to a boat in dry dock on the other side of the port.  The captain told me that had searched all the boats in dry dock and found my gear in this one.

If he had started at the beginning of the line, then this would have been the fifteenth or so boat he had searched in the hour and a half I had been napping.  I guess it was lucky that the boat the thief had stored my computer in was unlocked.

All the pictures on my camera from the cliffs, waterfalls, extensive rock gardens, and castle of the previous day had been deleted as well as a song that I performed in front of the castle on the subject of how wonderful kayaking in southern Italy is.  The language on my camera was set to Italian.

Dear President Obama,

Please obliterate southern Italy.  Almost as bad as the theft is the ample side serving of lies that come with the help I receive in recovering my items.

Sincerely,

Dov Neimand

 

Day 87

12/24/2013

This morning I launched from the beach. Luigi and a friend of his were watching so I took the time to do it right. I studied the waves. The big waves were coming in groups of three or four. When there was a lull, I put my boat down in the near the water. My shoes were covered in sand, but I wanted to get my launch right so I shoved them into my cockpit as they were. With all speed, I attached my spray skirt. Without a moment to spare, a wave came in and picked me up.

I was waterborn. Before the next wave could push me back into the sand I sprinted towards the open water. I crashed through three breaking waves before I was free of the surf zone.

I waved to Luigi, proud that when I set my mind to it, I can make a perfect beach launch.

With my dry top on for the cold dark rainy day my skirt didn't chafe. It did still push me a touch farther back in my seat than I'm comfortable with. I kept the skirt on until the early afternoon when I paddled into flat waters.

The wind and waves blew in from the northeast, and mainland to the north and a peninsula to the east sheltered me.

The peninsula itself was walled by the first sea cliffs I'd seen in a few days. Streams, no doubt a result of the morning's rain, cascaded down the valleys. Rocks rose out of the sea near the cliffs and I paddled in between them to be in the position for best admiration.

At the end of the peninsula rose an enormous castle on an island. In addition to a huge tower and crenelations, I could see into smaller rooms through the collapsing walls.

Past the castle the wind and waves picked up. But I was full of energy and charged into two meter swells, one after another, exhilarated by the challenge and the excitement of the booming surf around me. It helped that it was the last 100 meters before the port. I sang loudly as I surfed a wave into the flat calm, safe harbor here in Le Castella.

When I finished unpacking I turned my boat upside down to keep the rain out. I inspected the hull. It was pock marked as though it had been hit by shrapnel. These were not kayaking wounds from today. Kayaking wounds are scratches that result from something sharp sliding against the hull. Theses were the results of some trauma that happened to the boat while it was stolen.

The holes were deeper than the gel coating and pierced the carbon fiber, though not all the way through. I'll have to try to find epoxy to fix it.

 

Nautical miles paddled:  11

Total since Naples: 353.5

Current location:  38.911397,17.027113

 

Sorry, no pictures.  The reason will be in the next post so stay tuned.