Day 96

1/15/2014

I slept only twenty or so feet from the water.  And since I heard the waves crashing into the stones with great force, I went back to sleep a few times to procrastinate what would undoubtedly be an ugly launch.

When I was finally ready, the waves weren’t as big as I had imagined.  But the beach was steep and the waves were breaking hard into it.  I committed myself to getting very wet while launching and began.

I counted the big waves.  They came in sets of six.  The next set came and at seven I was ready to move, only it was big also.  So was eight, and nine.  It was a double set.  At thirteen the water was calmer and I launched.

I was passed the surf, and balancing very precariously with something big between my butt and the seat.  I arched my back so that my shoulders were on my stern deck.  With my right hand I tried to use the buoyancy of my paddle for support and with my left I fished around until I managed to free my quick grab bag and get everything in order.

I was off.

I passed a towering castle, then farms, forests, and hills.  I paddled through nasty stinky chemical water and used my paddle like a canoe paddle so as not to get the slime on my hands. I passed rivers with reeds. I paddled past purple rimmed jellyfish bigger than your head.  It’s the second time I saw one, but this time it let me take better pictures.

It’s hard to take pictures in the surf.

I kept track of my speed with my GPS and I once again found myself staying over 3.5 knots, the speeds I paddle at when I had my winged paddle.  I think it takes a little more energy with the storm paddle, and I’m going to lose another day soon so that my hands can heal again, but I’m getting the hang of keeping up a good pace.

I even paddled at over five knots when a scary monster wave was breaking off my starboard.  SPRINT!  I made it past the break, which would have likely left me stranded on the beach in a very undignified position with sand up my nose.

The wave, still tall but a section not breaking, passed under me pop[ed me into the air settled down.

I arrived in the port of Policoro.  Like Laghi Sibar, it’s a town designed to give every house canal access.  The water and the streets are cleaner though.

I looked around and could not tell where the port’s office was.  I tried contacting them on the radio.  They answered!  in Italian.  I had no idea what they were saying in answer to my question “Dove officio? [where’s the office?]”

When I did find it, it was closed which made me wonder who I had been talking with on the port’s chanel.  Next to the office was a bar with a wifi connection and lots of outlets to plug into.  I felt like I had stepped back into the first world.

A man there called the local Lega Navale for me, and they told me they could not host me.  Oh well, at least I found internet access got to write this post.  

I was thinking it would take a really long time for my paddles to arrive in the mail, since my radio which was mailed a long time ago, still hasn’t come.  It turns out we put the wrong address on the package.  And the package for my phone.

When I was in Laghi Sibari, I hitchhiked into the post office in SIbari to ask them if anything could be done about my mail in the system with the wrong address.  They said no, tough luck.

Corrado Fano, the most heroic person I know to whom I am not related, went to the post office in Naples.  He rescued my phone from their clutches and learned that my radio was sent back to the states.  Thank you Corado!  I will soon be coming to pick up my phone.  It’ll be an opportunity to let my hands heal.

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Nautical miles paddled:  17

Total since Naples:  465.5

Current location:  40.205312,16.730203

 

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Day 95

1/14/2014

Laghi Sibari is a small town designed so that almost every house in it backs up to one of the canals.  In the winter, I don’t think there are more than twenty people in the town at any given moment.  A small bar sells some bare necessities and if you need anything else you’d have to drive eight kilometers to Sibari.

The main port is kept locked.  It has a few long piers and a bathroom with a hot shower that I slept in.  The office gave me a key.

When I left my boat there, I took most of my electronics with me, since the thieves seem to go for that stuff.  I did not take the PLB, in the hope that if someone stole the boat, the might be silly enough to activate it from their home.

I stayed for a few days to let my hands heal.  When I left they weren’t completely better, but much improved.  I’m in no rush, since if I arrive at the end of Italy before my paddles, I’ll have to wait for them.

Someone stole my PLB.  I sent an email to the US PLB people so it’s now registered as stolen.  It hasn’t been activated yet.  When I asked a couple of fishermen if they had seen anything they claimed not to understand me, even though I’m getting pretty good at telling people my gear was stolen.

When I asked people in town who were friendly towards me if they could help, I found a stone wall.

It was time to leave.  The big metal door to the marina was closed.  I was in my boat near the office.  A fisherman stood on the dock, which was high up.  I figured I was in luck, he could pop into the office and ask them to open the gate for me rather than me taking out and putting in, considerable hassle.

The fisherman told me the port was closed and that the door couldn’t be opened.  And even if it was opened, the canal was closed.

“I can get through the canal opening.  It’s not a problem.”

No I couldn’t, he told me.  That was impossible.

“I arrived that way Friday morning!”

No, it’s impossible.

I got out of my boat and went to the office.  The woman was happy to open the gate for me. I paddled away.

At first the water was flat, but as the day moved on it got rougher.  I was beached on a bunch of rocks.  I had to make a number of support strokes in waves near the shore.

I think I’ll need to stay near the shore until I get a new PLB.  I don’t know.

By the time I arrived in Borgata Marina I was tired.  I took out on the pebble beach right next to a bar that looked closed for the winter.  There was an awning I could sleep under.

I used some junk to hide my kayak while I went into town looking for an internet connection.  People told me to go to Sport Bar.

“Hi, do you have a wifi connection?”

“There is free public connection outside.”

“Can I sit here and use it?”

“It’s outside.”

I sat outside and tried to connect to the internet, but all I got was a page in Italian asking for a username and password.

I didn’t need a connection to write my story for the day though.  All I needed was a place to plug in my computer.  No, I could not plug in my computer in Sport Bar.  

There was a toy store near where I parked my boat. The owner sat hunched over a laptop.  I told her my story.  No, I couldn’t plug in my computer there either.

I went to refill my water bag at a pump.  The police stopped me and questioned me.  I told them my story.  After radioing in my passport information, they wished me luck on my trip.

I slept under the awning at the abandoned bar.

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Nautical Miles paddled: 17

Total since Naples:  448.5

Current location:  39.9698,16.625986

 

Day 94

This blog lately has had a lot of downers. I want to remind my readers that I’m having an amazing time out here. Every time I paddle I enjoy the thrill of the sea. The problem is that if I keep on writing that I’m seeing breathtaking views, you guys, my readers, will just assume that I’m coming down with asthma. I’m having a great time out here, even if day 94 does begin with me trying to decide if I can paddle with only partially healed ripped hands.

Day 94

I was cold in all my clothing in my sleeping bag in my bivi sack. I wondered if all the use and tight storage had cost my bag some of it’s loft.

The sun rose and I packed quickly. I stopped to take a piece of glass out of my foot that I probably picked up a couple of days earlier. It hurt, but my tweezers and some alcohol, for the wound, put an end to it.

A fisherman pulled a struggling octopus out of the water with a line. I haven’t seen many marine critters in the water. The Mediterranean is substantially overfished. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea#Overfishing

I didn’t feel bad for the creature. I felt bad for us. The fisherman took something precious from the community for himself. I’m sure that his fishing was more than recreational and an important part of his diet, but I still felt bad.

That’s probably why I’ve never seen a dolphin in the Mediterranean. Dolphins go where the food is, and there’s just not that much around here. Dolphins are one of the most amazing creatures on earth. Aside from their nearly unparalleled hydrodynamic natural beauty, they are perhaps the only creature on the earth besides man that has has a multitude of languages.

Dolphins talk with each other, and if you take one from its pod and put it in another, it won’t be able to understand its new peers. Just like me here in Italy, it takes a while to pick up a new language

Douglas Adams, a renown marine biologist, writes this about those elegant creatures whose home we’re destroying:
“On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.”

Poor squid. Poor us. Poor dolphins.

The sea was flat. I had a choice to make. I could cross directly to Sibari Marina, or follow the coast. Following the coast would be about four miles longer, the same distance a direct crossing would take me off shore.

My hands were not in good shape. If I was out and decided I needed to stop early, too bad for me. Of course, the farther I had to go to make the next Lega Navale, the more likely I would fail. A wind was forecast to come from the mountains off my port side. I would have to adjust my course, but I didn’t think it would slow me much. If I stayed near the shore, I probably wouldn’t feel it and if I did I could use the waves moving towards the beach to compensate.

There was a white lighthouse at the point where I had to decide. Two miles were behind me and my hand were doing fine. I began the crossing.

The sun shone and sparkled on the flat sea. Snow capped mountains ahead glowed in the light. To my left villages disappeared into foggy heights. And I made good time. I kept my speed over 3.5 knots and often over four. The same sorts of speeds I got with my winged paddle I was now making with my old spare.

I don’t know why. Maybe I just needed an adjustment period. Maybe there was half a knot of current with me. Maybe I just felt good. If I had my winged would I have been paddling at four and 4.5? I don’t know. But I did feel good.

That’s probably why I got to see the dolphin. My heart pounded. It had surfaced and gone back down just like a dolphin, but it was a ways off - and coming closer.

I saw it more clearly. Its two main top fins elegantly gliding in and out of the water a few hundred feet ahead.

Dolphins don’t have two fins. I’ve seen them in the everglades. This one seemed to. Maybe it wasn’t a dolphin after all. It was big.

It came closer. It was two dolphins, surfacing and diving in perfect tandem. One of them was small, maybe the size of a bread box. The other was probably a little bigger than me.

They simultaneously leaped into the air when they were about twenty feet away. My heart pounded. I sat motionless in a supreme state of awe.

The dolphins dived down and came up farther off. I paddled towards them and they dived again, this time coming up even farther away.

I watched them a little while longer as they swam farther and farther and then I continued on.

When I was two miles away from Sibari and about a mile off the beach a boat came towards me and stopped about 500 hundred feet behind me. I had resumed paddling and the boats motors roared as it came closer then stopped again. It was a Coast Guard boat. I paddled backwards towards it.

The captain explained to me, first in Italian and then in English, that I had to stay within three hundred meters of the shore.

“Okay, scuzi,” I told him. I suspect I sounded as sincere as I felt since the shook his finger at me saying I was naughty.

He said that was all so I continued on my way.

I saw the dolphins again. This time there were at least three of them, and one was big. Maybe as big as my kayak. I suspect there were four, but I never saw more than three at once. I stopped to watched until they were far away.

I passed the mouth of a rushing river that hurled me off course with hand freezing water. I had expected the current, but my preemptive compensation was not quite enough. Once I was through, the eddie, which I had also foreseen and underestimated, pushed me onto the beach.

The next river was my exit. Red and green posts indicated it was the entrance to the port. Only it was more of a stream than a river. The water rushed through the beach and and was only a few feet deep. I don’t think many vessels besides a kayak could have gotten through, but there was no arguing with the posts.

Once past the beach the current relaxed and the water deepened. Forest surrounded me. Ahead of me was an old industrial concrete building and to my left large steel doors in the water surrounded by concrete. Signs indicated one door was for coming and the other going. Maximum speed was two knots.

I waited. Nothing happened. I blew my whistle. Again. And again. I tried contacting the doors operators on my radio. Again and again. No luck. I got out, picked my boat up, and climbed over the wall. I got back in on the other side.

The water was decorated with slime, floating goo, and oil slicks. I used my paddle like a canoe paddle so that I wouldn’t get the filthy water on my hands. The port was much more that the standard mooring center. It was an enormous canal that spread between bunches of pink apartments closed for the winter. I found a dock in what seemed to be a centralized port area.

No one was around. The port office and a cafe were open. The office attendant gave me a key to the port’s bathroom and the lady who sat in the cafe confirmed that the town was empty and there was no supermarket, but she’d be happy to pick things up for me.

The port bathroom had a hot shower and a sheltered floor to sleep on, and for the sabbath, that was really all I needed.

Nautical miles paddled: 15
Total since Naples: 431.5
Current location: 39.729898,16.506667

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Day 93

I set out today with my new paddle.  I felt heavier than my older storm paddle, but I liked that it gripped the water better.

I used a slightly different design.  It came recommended as a good internet source.  I drew the lines onto the wood and the three brothers and father that ran the factory cut.  They had a different machine for everything and did an amazing job at cutting exactly right really quickly.

For a finish, they didn’t have boiled linseed oil, but they gave me something that they said was similar.

Once there was a misunderstanding, and they cut a hard angle into the shaft, but I was watching their work closely and yelled “No! No! No!” and we patched it up with wood glue.

As I paddled out of the port I realized I left my phone behind.  Oh well.  A mile in and a car pulled into a parking lot near the water and honked loudly.  Rats.  I made a beach landing, thanked my friend profusely, and then a beach launch.

I don’t think the new paddle is any faster than the previous one.  Also, it makes my hands bleed.  At around mile six my hands began to feel sore and while I tried changing my style a little, there’s only so much I can do.

At mile eight I looked at my hands.  They were bleeding.  Not a lot, but with sea water constantly pouring on the wounds, they weren’t coagulating.  Not to mention I was still paddling and making things worse.

I switched back to my old paddle.  And pulled over at the first beach that looked good.  I would have to let my hands heal before I could paddle any more.

Maybe if I sand it down a lot, it will be smooth enough to paddle with, and weigh enough less.

The wood has a really tight grain, and fewer places where I accidently cut too deep with a rip saw.  It has more potential than my old paddle.

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Miles paddle: 9

Total since Naples: 416.5

Current Location:  39.613016,16.78204

 

A Delay and a Run

1/6/2013

It’s Monday.  I’m here in Cariat and have been since Thursday.  The boat builder here has assured me he can follow the instructions I give him and make me a paddle.  

Friday morning a couple of guys on his staff made a lot of calls until they found a place where I can get cedar, maybe.  The place was supposed to call back Friday or after the weekend to confirm.  Today is a holiday, so hopefully I’ll hear from them tomorrow.

I had an interview and a piece was written about me in a local newspaper.  This morning a fellow in a coffee shop recognized me and wanted to take a picture of me.  It was my first taste of celebrity life.  Hopefully when I’m wealthy and famous I won’t forget the little people I stepped on to get there.

Yesterday I went running in the mountains for a couple of hours.  

I climbed along a one lane paved road that dissolved into a couple of muddy wheel ruts with hoof prints.  To my left was a gorge with a rushing stream.  I passed fields, orchards, pasturing cows, and old farmhouses.  The woods smelled like fall and some of the tree colors matched.

I only embedded one thorn in my foot.  There was too much mud to take it out at first, but at the next stream crossing I washed my foot off and pulled the thumbtack sized thorn out.

On my way back down to the apartment I’ve been invited to stay in it rained the whole way.  I passed a group of about ten jeeps and pickup trucks in a field a few hundred yards aways.  I thought this was No Country for Old Men and minded my own business.

In sopping clothing I went to take a shower.  There was no hot water and my heart rate dropped, leaving me very cold.  I warmed up a pot of water on the stove and used it to wash myself in the bathtub a little bit at time.

Hopefully, I’ll soon have a brand new paddle.  The new one will also be a storm paddle, but a few centimeters longer and made from cedar.  If things go right, it will be faster and lighter, and I’ll be on my way with all speed.

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Day 92

1/2/2014

In the port of Ciro Marina the water was flat.  A crowd gathered to watch me paddle away and I always feel proud to use my storm paddle.  It looks good.

Outside of the port, the water was not flat.  Two meter swells surged forward breaking into the beach.  It was the sort of water I would be uncomfortable to stop and pee in.  A fleet of five fishing vessels with cabins and crews approached me in a line.  As I passed them I watched the fishermen for someone to tell me I was crazy and give me an excuse to turn around.

I waved hello and they waved back.   I hoped that around the point the waves would die down considerably so I could pee.  If they did not then it would be too late to turn back and I’d have to make a beach landing.

A white lighthouse rose from the woods behind the sandy point.  I caught a few perfectly sized waves to surf around the point into flat water.

Ahhhhhheeeeeeooo.

I made slow steady progress with my storm paddle.

I passed a four story industrial rig with cranes.  A pipe big enough for a Volkswagen ran a thousand feet suspended over the water from the rig to a factory on land.

A man on the beach waved to me and seemed to be telling me to come in.  It turned out he was a great friend of mine from the day before.  After a joyous greeting he took some pictures and wished me the best of luck on my continued journey.

A few miles later another fellow called me over to the beach.  He was Coast Guard and had an official coastguard car.  He wanted to make sure everything was okay.  It was, thanks Italian Coastguard!

I passed the mouth of a flowing river and was soon at my destination, Cariati.  It turned out the dock I parked on was locked by a gate, so I hopped over it and had a look around.

The previous Lega Navale was supposed to have called ahead, but maybe they couldn’t find anyone.  Oh well.

I hopped back over the fence to rejoin my boat and get my things together for the evening.  The Lega Navale president and a fellow from the coast guard came.  They were expecting me.

We went to a boatyard where a number of beautiful brand new wooden boats of all sizes were in various stages of construction.  The builder offered to help me with my paddle, and even read and follow the instructions.

I’ll be here for a few days while I build a better paddle.  I’m leaving my boat in the high security coast guard compound.  The Lega Navale is putting me up in a hotel.

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Nautical miles paddled:  15

Total since Naples: 406.5

Current location:  39.505001,16.940327