What's on
October was jam-packed with wonderful experiences.
In the first instance, a longish sojourn on the island of Menorca allowed me to take part in the "X Jornadas Menorca en kayak", (nearly) complete a circumnavigation and then hold a BCU 3-star course that was lots of fun and also multilingual. A second away trip to Vietri sul Mare rewarded me with an intense and fruitful week helping out (together with Trenk Muller) Phil Hadley, where he held a BCU 4-star course amongst one of the most beautiful stretches of coast in Italy.
I’ve also started the training necessary to become a level 3 BCU coach, with an initial session in October, followed by one at the end of November.  I’ve already enlisted a few volunteer trainees but I’m always on the lookout for more kayakers willing to help out with my “apprenticeship”.
If you paddle at a level of BCU 3-star or above, you’re more than welcome:
I can arrange training days that would be suitable for you, call me!

In between all of this we’ve found time to paddle on Lake Maggiore and
Lake Como as well as publish our Sicily-expedition themed 2016 photo calendar. If that isn’t enough, in November we held a double BCU 4-star course, in conjunction with Sardinian Discovery and led by none other than Ella Wilkinson and Nigel Dennis: it was, to say the least, both interesting and educative owing to the quite singular weather conditions!
The outlook for December indicates a month free of commitments, or nearly so! It will leave us ample space to enjoy some family-time as well as plan the programme for 2016.  We’ve got lots of ideas on what to do and I’m sure that a few will become reality.  Of course, we won’t leave you in dark so make sure to keep in touch via our website, blog and newsletter.

Meanwhile, dear friends, I wish you all a happy New Year, see you soon on the water!

Kayaking snippets

A friend of mine likes to say that the essence of life is change.
After 10 years of paddling, I’ve now have to accept the fact that I need reading glasses, having never had the need for them before. It wouldn’t be so much of a problem were it not for the fact that I like to paddle and not only, navigate too. What’s the difference, one might ask, but when I’m in my kayak I do spend quite some time checking up on the charts and relating them to the buoys, lights and landmarks around me. All printed in miniscule script! Some time ago I had given Mauro these reading glasses as a present after a fellow kayaker made good use of them during the Lussino trip. They are light and practical to use and I took a liking to them straight away. I’ve already sewn up a neoprene case, to be stowed in a pfd pocket, ready for use. It’s an excellent gift for those far-sighted expedition kayakers!

Call of the Inuit
"A kayak full of ghosts - Eskimo folk tales retold by Lawrence Millman" is a wonderful compendium of tales of the Inuit people (albeit that in the 2004 edition, the obsolete word “eskimo” is used).
The stories are a mix of fantasy, myth and even the macabre set in the apparently cold and sterile Arctic.  They narrate crude or even cruel tales: children that devour their parents, men that marry rocks, shamans that turn into animals at any time of the day…

They’re accounts that can be described as beneficial, even saving.  Enlightening. Especially in these times, what Tiziano Terzani wrote in 2001, is even more true today: return to Nature to find peace!

Over the horizon
I’ve just taken delivery of the latest number of PAGAIANDO, the magazine published by the “Federazione Italiana Canoa Turistica”. I was impressed and really liked it!  Not only for the front cover depicting my friend Giancarlo in a textbook brace position but also that we finally have the kayaking publication that I was hoping for! The first number was a harbinger of what was to follow and the latest one is a magazine that deals with all types of paddle sport - from Canadian to canoe polo and surfski. There’s the latest news  of the various club gatherings but above all interesting articles that deal with the technical aspects of our sport that sometimes are forgotten (such as the latest laws and regulations, medical advice etc.).  What’s more the editors have committed themselves to improve the content even further, to make it a publication that belongs to all paddlers!