Venezia

Venice Italy

Sailors go wherever the wind will take them. For cruisers, sailing is wonderful, but it usually is all about the destination. And iconic destinations are on every cruiser’s list. New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Venice, we all want to sail our boats into legendary harbors.

Motoring along the inland sea to Venice was calm, quiet and scenic, and we enjoyed every minute, but we could not wait for the chaos we knew awaited us in the Venice Lagoon.

We visited Venice years ago by airplane, a highlight being the water taxi ride from the airport to our hotel. It was just as we’d seen in the movies, fast and crazy. Now, we were taking Berkeley East along that same path, granted moving at a much slower pace, but it was no less exciting, and equally as wild.

There were boats everywhere, ferries, water taxis, gondolas, enthusiastic Italian drivers all moving fast and furious to reach their end point. And while it was stressful and downright scary, we couldn’t help but smiled as we turned BE into the lagoon and saw the familiar, famous waterfront.

Venezia! We’d made it. We had traveled over 15,000 miles from the US, brought our boat to Venice, and were now the furthest north we had ever been on Berkeley East, even further north than Maine.

Sailing in the Venice Lagoon is prohibited, but motoring was best in this hectic environment anyway.

We maneuvered BE into photo op positions as other boats converged upon us. Surprisingly, no one honked or yelled, they were actually very patient with us American tourists. We saw cameras snapping photos as the ferries passed by, not sure if they liked our flag, or were ready to capture a collision on film. We escaped the madness without a scratch, settled BE into a berth at a marina across the lagoon, and began to explore Venice.

Despite our attempts Berkeley East wouldn’t clear the bridges to get into the canals

Since we could not take Berkeley East into the canals, not even the Grand Canal, we decided to take the dinghy.

With map in hand, we crossed the lagoon, dodging the same crazy boats we had feared while on BE, and found our way into the winding canals. It didn’t take long to realize that the map was useless and we had to rely on our sense of direction, also not very helpful. Most of the canals are just wide enough for one boat, so it was always a challenge when we met a water taxi or gondola. The dinghy took one hit from a gondola (we were definitely in their way) but again there was no yelling, they just continued on in a very professional manner.

We spent several days in Venice, exploring all the little alleys, revisiting some of our favorite sites, soaking up the electric atmosphere. We were also lucky to be able to time our visit so we could meet up with our niece Tori, who was on a whirlwind tour of Italy after her high school graduation.

Seeing Venice again was great, taking Berkeley East there was even better.

Hanging out in Piazza San Marco, listening to music and enjoying some Prosecco

There were so many great sites and pictures; we couldn’t decide what to put in the blog, so take a look at our Venice gallery.