Croatia | holiday | living - All about Croatia

Sunday morning at 05:45 we left the camp together with 10 other kayakers and went direction Venice, after a 1 ½ hour drive we arrived in Venice where we easily found the parking spaces (just after the bridge), which Georgia hat recommend us on the info meeting the day before.

At 07.45 we all had offloaded and prepared our kayaks and were ready to go. From the point where we entered the water there was about 30-40 min paddling to the regatta starting point the Piazza Saint Marco.

Shane and I had of course signed up for the regatta, but we did not yet get our starting number, so we had to go to the official information office to pick it up, typical Italian they of course had moved this, so after being directed to several wrong places we finally managed to find it and get our number. Shortly before 09:00 we were gathered with the rest of the group directly in from of the Piazza Saint Marco, waiting for the starting signal.

Precisely at 09:00 a canon shot was fired and 1600 registered and x number of unregistered vessels started moving, Amazing!! All kind of different vessels like Dragon boats, kayaks, rowing boats, Gondola , start paddling and rowing at the same time.

Before the race I had my serious doubts if I would be able to paddle more then am few km, but as It was so interesting to see all the boats and people dressed up for the race, I did not notice how far we were actually going, so when we stopped for a break at a sand pier, I was assuming we had paddled 4-5 km, I turned out that we actually at that point of time already went 12 km, and the island not far in front of us was Burana, the turning point, so I really started believing I could actually finish the race.

In Burana (I nice city with lots of colourful houses) we went down the main Canal in the centre of the city, here there was “supply ships” distributing bananas, water and fanta for the paddlers. Many participants actually stopped here for real lunch in one of the restaurants, or had lunch on the boat, but as I said to Shane “I already manage to get out of the kayak once without falling in the water, so I didn’t feel like wanting to push my luck again”.

After Burano the hardest part of the race came, 6-8 km on open water with few “milestones”, so I had to take several breaks, so Shain had to do the hard work him selves, but eventually we managed to pass this part also and enter into the city Murano (famous for its glass production), from here one the tower on the Marcus church became bigger and bigger which was very good for the motivation.

As we reach the races bottleneck, a small canal in the city part Cannaregio, I was already totally full, so we had to fight our way through as you can see on our Video, but after around 20 minutes we manage to pass the bridge causing the bottleneck and headed on towards Kanal Grande. The last part of the race was easy, all along Kanal Grande and on the bridges there was people encouraging us shouting Forza Forza when we past by, which of course gave plenty of motivation to keep going.

At around 14:00 we passed the finish line in front of the Piazza Saint Marco and got our medal and diploma, after crossing we paddle back to where our cars was parked, so at 14:45 after 7 hours in a Kayak we finally had solid ground under our feet again. Of course I had pain especially in my arms, but the feeling have actually manage the 30 km was every pain worth, so for sure would recommend also newbie’s like me to try something like this, I definitely will do it again.

Our fotos from Vogalonga

Here is some usefull links for Vogalonga and for kayak holiday in general

The camp which we stayed in - Capalonga

The organizer of the Bibione kayak week - Bibionekayak

Kayak holiday in Croatia - lifejacketadventures

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