Panathlon Club | Venice: I am not making this up

Reports written the day after said there were 150 (or even 200) boats in this gathering. It was really fun to see everybody out again, not to mention the doctors, etc. on the fondamenta in front of the hospital.

Last Sunday morning there was quite the boating event, after three months without either boats or events. Everybody was more than ready for it.

Seeing that the city is on the verge of complete reopening after the three-month lockdown, the moment was right for the “Vogada de la Rinascita” (Row of the Rebirth). The morning afloat was emotional (the worst is over, we hope; the day is glorious; finally we’re all out rowing again) and a tangible way of expressing group gratitude to the medical personnel of the hospital, as well as a gesture of respect to the victims.

The event was organized by the Panathlon Club, Venice chapter (fun fact: Panathlon International, now numbering some 300 chapters scattered across 30 countries, was founded in Venice in 1951), with the collaboration of the Comune.

We were there with two sandolos from the F. Morosini Naval Military School, where Lino teaches Venetian rowing. Cadets and passengers are looking good on the way from the school to the Arsenal (Lino astern, a friend on the bow). Going with the tide just added to that happy feeling. (I was on the other boat, obviously.)

The boats began slowly to assemble in the Great Basin of the Arsenal. Allow me to draw your admiring attention away from the boats for a moment to the enormous Armstrong Mitchell hydraulic crane, installed here in 1883. At the end of the 19th century there were nine of these behemoths in the world, but this is the only one left and is designated a historic monument by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape. It could lift up to 160 tons of weight, primarily naval artillery and sheets of steel for the cladding of battleships.

At the head of the procession, departing from the Arsenal, was a gondola carrying Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor, in the bow, and making a video amidships is Giovanni Giusto, president of the Coordinating Association of Rowing Clubs as well as the municipal delegate tasked with keeping up with Venetian rowing. Be cynical if you want to, but seeing the mayor rowing (and he did the whole thing) was unusually cool.

The “local police,” otherwise known as the “vigili,” have their own sandolo Buranello. There was an effort a while ago to reinstate their once-normal patrols of the canals by oar-power, but I think that rapidly faded away.

The corteo departed the Arsenal at 11:00 AM, and we all wended our way toward the hospital, where we stopped and gave the traditional “alzaremi” salute to the assembled doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel gathered on the fondamenta. Much clapping, many smiles. Much noontime sun scorching our skulls.

We weren’t practicing social distancing, but it just so happened that we were in an open space at that moment.

After executing the “alzaremi” twice, people just sort of hung around for a minute or so before the corteo got moving again. I’m seated astern with what looks like an oar in my lap. Of course it’s an oar, but I don’t remember it being that close.

Down the Cannaregio Canal, and the Grand Canal, to a pause in front of the basilica of the Salute (dedicated to Our Lady of Health, appropriate in this case), where members of the chorus of La Fenice and musicians of the Benedetto Marcello conservatory performed assorted wonderful pieces. We didn’t linger — by that point it was almost 1:00 PM and the heat and the hunger were singing their own little duet in our brains: “Shade…food…water…food…shade…”.

Considering how lavishly this was reported in the foreign press — and we were hugely photogenic, it’s true — not only was the corteo lovely to look at, but it conveyed the message that Venice is alive and has come out of its pharmacological coma. Translation: Get traveling, people. We’re ready for you.