Friday, October 16, 2009

Passing Group - Third Gondola

As I mentioned before, to the untrained eye, all gondolas may look the same. Closer scrutiny however, reveals charachteristics unique to each boat.

The third gondola I observed had a few unusual details:
The green canvas bow cover while not present in the first two gondolas, is not unusual. Most are blue, but green is seen in Venice as well.

The deck trim was what first caught my eye - there seems to be an additional trim line within each flat deck surface.

The second thing I noticed was how the trasto-da-prua was not carved in the usual way (with carvings that stretch from rail to rail), but instead, there was a medium-sized crest carved at the peak with the rest of the trasto left plain.

The ferro was missing one of it's three decorative pieces, but that's about as common as a boxer with a broken nose.

This gondolier emerged from under the bridge, interacting with his passengers and pointing to something ahead. He was wearing a white overshirt and sunglasses.

The fuzzy fringe of his seats was faded a bit - this frequently happens when you leave the black-fringed seats in the sun too much (I learned that the hard way).

Lately I've noticed spare remi aboard a lot of the gondolas I've seen in Venice. They may have always been there, but they are a new target on my radar.
This guy had two of them, tucked neatly under the deck - you can just barely see them between trastolini and deck behind the gondolier.

2 comments:

Bepi Venexiano said...

Greg,

As these guys dont have fleets my guess is that it's just plain storage. If they have a problem they go the yard otherwise they need: 1. boat 2. remi & fork 3.themselves. We need: Well, you know what we need to have. On Nellie a starboard sancon under the caenela is all but disolved from years of impact from storing remi. BTW Did I mention that I have declared myself Doge in Exile and that my booth is now sovereign territory of the Republic of Venice. Just though you should know. What was Nereo's quote again?

Gondola Greg said...

I'll let Nereo weigh in here regarding quotes.
Bravo for the sovereign territory thing, I just hope the Italian government doesn't start taxing you at their rate, which I'm told is about 48%.