The water-taxi drivers of Venice are a flashy lot, with their gleaming
engines, shiny teak decks and bright white teeth. While driving, they talk
constantly on their mobile phones, and on a Tuesday back in May, I’m pretty
sure this is what one of them was saying.
“Romeo? It’s Lothario. You know the big ugly cabin cruiser you told me about?
Si, I’ve spotted him again: he’s up by Murano in the lagoon, about to crash
into a vaporetto. Si, si, look!” [Holds up phone and snaps picture.] “ Fantastico,
eh? Momento... Si! No! Missed by a metre. No, don’t call the carabinieri
yet. I want to see what happens when he tries to moor up...”
In cities where cars are the chief mode of transport – that is, all other
cities – they don’t let anyone loose on the roads without a licence of some
sort. But in Venice, any hapless fool can rent a boat and steam around the
lagoon on production of nothing more than a credit card and a gormless
smile. Being in possession of both, that’s what I’d done, and now I was
master of my own ship for a few days on the most seductive stretch of water
in Europe. I couldn’t quite believe it. And judging by the look on that
vaporetto driver’s face, neither could he.
You don’t launch directly into the lagoon – which, given the amount that can
and does go wrong there, is a blessing. Jaqui and I picked up our boat a few
miles inland at Casier. We were a bit shocked at the size of it – 39ft,
sleeps six at a squeeze, a sort of waterborne people-carrier – but at least
we had a cruise down the Sile River, past noble villas and country towns, to
get used to handling the thing, and to ease the gentle, disorientating
transition from land to sea.
There’s no one moment when you enter the lagoon: instead, the land just eddies
away. The river banks descend from firm high ground to reedy expanses to a
succession of low, muddy islets. Fishing nets stand drying on intricate
rigs. Old men wade through the muck, bucket in hand, hunting clams. A vast
horizon opens out, with just one or two features sprouting up from the
inhabited islands to guide you – the 1,000-year-old tower of Torcello
cathedral and, behind it, the drunkenly tottering campanile of Mazzorbo. If
you’d come this way five centuries ago, you’d have seen much the same thing.
Like the early merchants, like the very mud Venice is built on, you are
swept downstream from the plains of the Veneto to a treacherous waterworld.
Why treacherous? A bit of history explains it best. In AD810, the Venetian
fleet sailed out to the open Adriatic to attack the Frankish navy. Then they
feigned terror and fled back to the lagoon. The Franks, a straightforward
bunch, gave chase, and soon found themselves running aground all over the
place.
Stuck fast as the tide retreated, their ships were picked off one by one: the
heavily armoured knights aboard were either hacked to pieces or left
stranded on the shoals to rust slowly to death.
What the canny locals had done was to remove the bricole, the stout wooden
posts that mark the navigable channels. Because, while it might look like
open sea to the casual noodle in a motor launch or a Frankish warship, the
Venice lagoon is a sham. Much of it is only a foot or two deep at low tide.
Follow the thin, twisting channels created by the tidal flow and you’re fine,
but stray too far and you’re stuck fast in silty goo.
The bricole are firmly in place today, and, as we didn’t fancy emulating the
Frankish experience, we stuck to within a few feet of them as we cruised
through open water. Only later did we learn that you’re supposed to leave
room for a bigger vessel – a vaporetto, say – to pass on your inside. Which
explained why, for much of our journey, we were playing chicken with
purple-faced boatmen. We had near misses with vaporettos (naturally), a
dredger, a rubbish boat (I mean it was carrying refuse, though it wasn’t in
great shape), a freighter packed with cabbages and something that looked
like a hearse. It was a lively afternoon.
WE STOPPED for the night at Burano, the first built-up island you come to.
It’s possibly the tweeest place on earth. As we chugged to the mooring, we
could feel our teeth rot just looking at it: a jumble of cute, brightly
painted fishermen’s cottages – candyfloss pink, lemon-sherbet yellow, Fanta
orange. It’s like a Renaissance Balamory.
By day, Burano is an established excursion for tourists hoping to escape the
chaos of Venice, but instead they bring it with them. Boats disgorge swarms
of trippers, a human tide that surges over the green by the vaporetto stop,
eddies around the washing strung between the trees, then gurgles down the
little alleyways towards the main square. The island’s immense charm is
swamped by the babel of sunburnt Brits, gormless Swedes, bossy Korean tour
guides and whingeing American backpackers, their fluorescent fanny packs
clashing painfully with the pastel houses.
By night, though, it’s transformed. The tourists depart (there are virtually
no hotels, so a boat’s pretty much the only way to stay), the souvenir shops
close and nearly all the two dozen restaurants on the main drag shut down,
leaving a rough bar where locals argue vociferously about Formula One and
football. Cats slink along the alleyways, women gossip on corners and you’re
free to wander the fondamente in peace.
It’s unbelievably romantic – perfect cottages lit up by moonlight reflected
off the black canals, heart-freezing views across the lagoon to floodlit
cupolas – and any prose describing it runs the risk of being not so much
purple as ultraviolet. So let’s keep it simple. It was very pretty. We slept
well on the boat. And the next day, we set off for Venice.
FOR SHEER architectural drama, few things on earth match the entrance to the
Grand Canal. What you’re apt to forget, sitting awestruck at the wheel of
your motor cruiser, is that the Bacino di San Marco, as this stretch of
water is known, is also the maritime equivalent of Spaghetti Junction.
Here, the M6 of the Grand Canal meets the A38 of the Canale della Giudecca and
the M1 of the Canale di San Marco. It’s chaos. There are no rules about who
should go where, but there is a procedure to settle the frequent disputes,
and it reads as follows: a) vaporettos are in the right; b) everyone else is
in the right too, as long as they stay out of the way of the vaporettos,
with the exception of c) foreigners on deeply uncool motor cruisers, who are
in the wrong; and d) gondoliers must shout at everyone, but especially those
covered under c).
We didn’t know all this when we rounded the point off Sant’ Elena and motored
up towards the world’s most famous high street. We did know – it had been
drummed into us rather at the boat yard – that we weren’t allowed to go up
the Grand Canal itself, on pain of gunship attack from the local plods, who
get quite aerated about such things. But I reckon we were a good 100 yards
offshore when the majesty of the view overwhelmed me and I cut the engine.
We wanted a Moment of Contemplation. Anyone would. As we bobbed in the midst
of the mayhem, there in front of us was the indecently curvy bosom of Santa
Maria della Salute (1681), the Basilica (1094 and on), the Doge’s Palace
(1300sish), and a parade of palazzos lining the world’s most illustrious
waterway. It would look spectacular on any day, but with the sunshine
spattering jewelled reflections off the water onto every dome and archway,
it was magical.
However... for people who live in such a spiritually uplifting place,
Venetians can be depressingly focused on everyday, purely material concerns.
So what if we’d drifted into the path of a couple of ferries and obstructed
a police boat, or if the current was sweeping our hulking cruiser into a
small marina full of delicate, gleaming gondolas? You’d think they’d take it
as a compliment that we’d got a bit distracted by the wonders of their city,
but not a bit of it. They were really quite rude. Still, the engine caught
on the third try, and we chugged off, waving cheerfully at the shaking fists
and speculating as to what succhiatore might mean. It sounds like a
dessert of some sort.
We moored up later and did some sightseeing on foot. It was fabulous, of
course, but I’m not going to waste your time explaining how: the intricacies
of Venice have been documented by scores of writers with whom I don’t have
the cheek to compete. Anyway, truth be told, we spent much of the time
hankering to be away from the crowds and back on the water.
Because it’s only when viewed from the water that you realise what an
astonishing achievement Venice is. On land, it can seem almost normal –
wonderful, but wonderful in the same way as Florence or Machu Picchu or
Angkor Wat. The pavements and buildings lull you into a false sense of
solidity. But from a boat, you see the truth. This is a marsh. When King
Alfred got chased into a marsh by invaders, all he did was burn some cakes.
When the same thing happened to the Venetians, they imported a million or
two tree trunks, drove them down through the muck, laid foundations on them
and built the most beautiful city on earth. They can be a hard bunch to
like, but credit where it’s due.
Against the odds, we didn’t hit anything on the way home, and only ran aground
once. More through luck than judgment, though. At some point, the Italians
are bound to close whatever loophole it is that allows incompetent
foreigners to cruise their waterways endangering essential shipping. If
you’re wise, you’ll book a boat before they do. Just watch out for the
vaporettos.
Travel brief: Connoisseur (0870 160 5648, www.connoisseurboating.co.uk)
has a range of boats for weekly hire in the Venice lagoon; from £845 for a
craft sleeping four. The company has some free mooring sites, but it can be
more convenient to use commercial marinas, with fees from £28 to £80 per
night. Other companies to try include Crown Blue Line (0870 240 8393, www.crownblueline.
co.uk) and Blakes (0870 220 2498, www.blakes.co.uk).
Fly to Treviso, a few miles from the Casier boatyard, with Ryanair (0871 246
0000, www.ryanair. com), from
Stansted, Liverpool, Dublin or Shannon.
