During the past two weeks there has been fog: Some days on, then sunshine, then back the fog rolls again. It’s very poetic and romantic, looked at one way. But it’s highly inconvenient if you need to take the vaporetto to do something unpoetic, because some lines are suspended, and the rest are all sent up and down the Grand Canal. This means that you may well be walking farther to your destination than you had budgeted time and energy for. Maybe you yourself can manage that, but if you’re a very sick and frail old lady — looking at you, Maria from upstairs — who has to get to the hospital for her chemotherapy, the fact that your vaporetto doesn’t exist today means you’re forced to take a taxi to the hospital. That’ll be 50 euros please. Going, and then coming home. Not at all poetic if you’re living on 750 euros a month.
But let’s say you’re on one of the vaporettos, living a routine day. Don’t relax completely. Because even though the battelli (the big fat waterbuses) have radar, and so does the ferryboat trundling up and down the Giudecca Canal between Tronchetto and the Lido, that doesn’t guarantee that the drivers are looking at it, or if they are, are understanding what they are seeing. Radar, much like bras or penicillin, is intended to help you, but only if you actually use it.
I mention this because yesterday the fog was pretty thick. And around 1:00 PM, the #2 that crosses the Giudecca Canal between the Zattere and the Giudecca itself collided with the ferry. At that point the two routes are operating at right angles to each other. Everybody knows this. I mean, one shouldn’t be even minimally surprised to find these two boats out there.
But find each other they did. In the collision nobody was hurt, but one passenger temporarily lost his mind and punched the marinaio, the person who ties up the boat at each stop, in the face. Why the marinaio? Because he was there, I suppose. He certainly wasn’t navigating. Nor was the captain, evidently.
To translate the phrase in the brief article in La Nuova Venezia, “Probably the incident was caused by the thick fog.” I don’t mean to be pedantic, but “The fog made me do it” doesn’t sound quite right. The fog had been out for hours; it hardly sneaked up on the boats from behind. The pedant further wonders why the fog gets all the blame. It didn’t grab the two boats and push them together, like two hapless hamsters. One might more reasonably say that the incident was caused by two individuals, one per boat, who were not paying attention either to the water ahead or to their radar. Footnote: These vehicles operate on schedules. I’m going to risk saying that one could easily predict when they would be, as they put it here, “in proximity to each other.” If one wanted to.
But let’s return to the poetry.
Rio de la Ca’ di Dio. The forecast is for more fog tomorrow. If I put on my gray coat, I’ll disappear.
18 Comments
Wow. That is some weather! Thanks for that, Erla, and for clearing up how one translates ‘marinaio’, which I’ve been wondering for years 😉.
Well, “marinaio” actually translates as “sailor” or “seaman.” Now that women are also serving as vaporetto-tyers-up, you’d say “marinaia.” But it wouldn’t have been helpful for me to simply refer to the “seaman” on the boat, nobody would have known who I was talking about.
I knew marinaio was the official job title in Italian and that it translates as sailor in English but as you say it’s not very explanatory to use sailor or seaman or woman for that specific job. We’ve tried ‘guard’ like on trains in Britain and ‘conductor’ like there used to be on buses when we were children, but we always end up resorting to ‘the one who opens and shuts the gate’.
There’s one particular marinaia who goes about her work with such grace, poise and fluidity of movement that I think she must be a dancer.
It never dawned on me that there is fog in Venice (which was silly, given that I lived in a coastal town for fourteen years). Never until I got on the wrong boat in the wrong direction and found myself abandoned someplace remote (Isola delle Tresse?) when a pea soup fog set in, and whence nothing was visible or audible. I lived to tell, as the saying goes.
The isola delle Tresse is part of the commercial port at Marghera, so I am completely stymied as to how you could have been on a boat, where you boarded, where you wanted to go, and how you could have been abandoned there. Any chance you were on the boat that goes back and forth between the Zattere and Fusina? Fusina can feel pretty remote. Still, that doesn’t explain how you ever heard the name isola delle Tresse. Back to the subject of fog: Yes, it can be highly disorienting. Dangerously so, in fact. Lino has some stories about being out in his boat alone in the fog… He managed to find a piling to tie up to and just waited for the fog to pass, otherwise he could easily have rowed himself out into the Adriatic. It was night. This was before cell phones. Good times!
Lino has just enlightened me that there is a tiny decrepit islet called Isola delle Tresse just on the periphery of Tronchetto that’s used in some functional way by the gas company. You can find both of these easily on Google maps. Still, I can’t imagine what vehicle you were on and why you were abandoned there. And how you got back? Completely baffled.
Good to hear from you through the fog, dear Erla.
Thank you for the very nice piece.
Our very very best to Maria !!! Thomas
You are very, very thoughtful. Message will be relayed!
It must amaze us all how every everyday activity can become so much harder with fog impeding it. In England we used to have some bad ones, more smog in cities, but it’s a lot cleared nowadays. I remember a couple of very foggy days when the vaps stopped running, when we’ve been in Venice, but it was seeing snow in Venice that totally floored me – in and enchanting way, of course. Thank you again.
I agree, I adore snow in Venice. I don’t think we’ll be seeing it again, though. Not cold enough. I have my photos to remind me of how lovely it was, and also how freaking hazardous the bridges were….
Thank you SO SO much for these postings!!
You are graceful and sweet even when you chastise the negligent captains… And the pictures are beautiful. Thanks for this post!
If there’s one term that chills the blood, it’s “human error.” Seems like it ought to be the perfect excuse for things that go wrong — somehow better than “mechanical malfunction.” Yet if the humans involved aren’t up to their assignment’s sometimes even minimal requirements, even perfect mechanical functions don’t matter. Clearly the vessels that collided were in perfect working order. Hey, glad you liked the photos — a highly appreciated compliment from someone who lived through the exact same days!
That newish glass bridge up at the ‘Bus station area ( the one that used to have a pod to “assist” disabled people )- was totally lethal in winter – the first time I went over it, I was in a hurry, and really felt to skid/slip. I’m told that pod is no longer there…..
That’s correct. The “ovovia” (egg road, because the pod looked like an egg) was an expensive eyesore that, having never been used, was finally removed on May 22, 2020. For one thing, it was too heavy for the bridge. Also, it took 15 minutes to make the trip from one shore to the other. The bridge was inaugurated in 2008, the ovovia was installed in 2013 (because handicapped-access is mandated by European law, something the designers and engineers in Calatrava’s workshop somehow forgot). So it took seven years to get the thing made, and it sat there for seven years doing nothing until it was taken away. And replaced by something simpler, cheaper, more efficient to aid the disabled to cross the bridge? Well, not so far. And yes, the risk of slipping and falling is real. They SAY that the glass steps will be replaced by some normal, non-skid surface. So much to do, so little time….so little money….so little concern…. well, che sera’ sera’, as the jaunty little song has it. Whatever will be, will be.
Another interesting observation on both the beauty and mystery of Venice and the stupidity of people. Of course the boats didn’t collide because of the fog but rather because someone choose not to take necessary precautions. On a day with perfect conditions I suppose the captains of the vaporetti could afford to let the guard down a bit but this was obviously not a such day.
The mentioning of radar made me remember a cruise on the Nile, years ago, when I was given the opportunity to see the bridge of the little riverboat that we traveled on. The captain of that vessel sat perched up on high stool drinking tea and maneuvered the ship with a minute joystick. He proudly swept his hand over all the fine equipment to his disposal on the bridge “I have radar, sonar, satellite[something]… all KAPUTT! [as in broken beyond repair]. The Nile is here!” he said, knocking lightly on his temple.
I guess that true seamanship can never be replaced with technology.
I have heard the same about experience vs. technology from an excursion-boat captain on the Po River. It’s notorious for shifting sandbanks and shallows, and of course his craft had sonar and every other instrument for navigation. But he said they were nowhere near as trustworthy as his own eyes because after so many years he could “read” the river better than the instruments could. Or words to that effect.