Gwendal's Coastal Meanderings

Category: Excursions

  • From Tel Aviv to Vancouver learning from each other

    I had the great fortune to be able to participate in the FuTurisme.com conference plenary discussion on mass tourism and the future of tourism at IMTM 2015. I was there at the invitation of Tel Aviv Global which is a municipal corporation tasked with promoting the economic development of the city attracting investment and developing tourism.
    One theme that was very prominent in their strategy is to leverage the tech start up ecosystem of the city.
    The conference had 42 travel related digital startup companies pitching their ideas and vying for the mayor’s digital travel award.
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    The Roschild boulevard at the heart of the city is a wonderful pedestrian and cycling oasis.

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    Getting a tour of the startup ecosystem in Tel Aviv. The big questions seemed to be that starting things was happening in an organic way but holding on to the dividends of that innovation was the challenge. Keeping successful startups in the city and making sure international investment was not just pulling the human capital out of the city.

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    That evening I was invited to a cocktail at city hall with the mayor of Tel Aviv where they unveiled a commemorative stamp of the city. Tel Aviv has been recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site for its white city collection of Bauhaus architecture. It also recently was recognized by UNESCO as a creative city in the digital sphere and they are running with it as a branding element for the city.

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    The Tel Aviv Global team also came up with a wonderful idea to put a call out to students to volunteer as local hosts for the conference speakers. This was an opportunity to meet someone with an interest in your subject matter, but also they acted as ambassadors and sometimes interpreters or even personal assistants. I found it to be invaluable and rewarding, helping me develop more insights and broadening the conversations I had.
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    My student host Marina Balkarey

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    Speaking on a panel discussing mass tourism and implications on destination development.

    After my presentation I was interviewed by Ayal Zaum, a City & Place branding consultant that also writes a popular blog called cityncountrybranding.com
    here is the article he wrote:
    http://cityncountrybranding.com/2015/02/12/%D7%9C%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9B%D7%AA-imtm-%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%A0%D7%95-%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%94-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%9E/

  • Un article mène à de nouveaux horizons

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    Suite à la publication de l’article dans Skift que j’ai poster récemment. J’ai reçu une invitation a participer a un congrès de tourisme international a Tel Aviv le 10 et 11 février. Avec tout juste un mois de préavis je n’étais pas sur que l’invitation soit sérieuse, mais après un échange de communication au ralenti à cause des onze heures de décalage.  Ils m’on confirmer qu’ils cherchait réellement à me fair participer à une colloque avec le ministre de tourisme de Israël, le consul général de Israël à New York entre autre. Le thème est de discuter le future du tourisme et l’impact sur le développement durable des destinations. Je vais parler de mon travaille et le contexte qui le met en valeur a Vancouver.
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  • Paddling for the 2014 king tide

    Yesterday with a group of friends we continued a tradition of meeting down at the Jericho Sailing Centre, donning our wetsuits or drysuits and heading out into Burrard Inlet for a stand up paddle. This year we waited a day after our usual boxing day outing to match up our paddle with the highest high tide of the year, which was a 5m tide. Fortunately their was little wind or waves and the tide did not bring with it any flooding or damage to the coastline. But after the last king tide earlier in the month where the wind came up, the Sailing Centre was prepared with sandbags.

    King tide at Jericho Dec 27 10:11am

    Dominique brought a his medium format film camera to capture the moment which was fun. We needed to flag down a runner to actually trip the shutter.

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    Here is my picture panorama of the set up for this.

    King tide at Jericho Dec 27 10:11am

    We had a 6-8 knot breeze from the SE for our paddle. As we made it close to the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club docks it started to rain, so unlike the year before where we managed to go hang around the freighters in complete calm and sunshine, our excursion this year was a little closer to shore but just as memorable.

  • Boat delivery from Steveston to Jericho

    Today my friend Dom asked me to help him take his boat RedFive, a J30 back from the boat yard in Steveston where it had bee hauled out and sanded down, to the RVYC marina at Jericho.
    We set off at 14h00 in a light drizzle and a rising tide.

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    All was quiet on the south arm of the Fraser as we motored out

    By the time we got to the Fraser lightship station at the mouth of the south arm where we would be able to turn north, the wind had freshness up to 12 knots out of the northwest. As we moved towards Point Grey the wind rose steadily and peaked at about 20 knots with a solid set of waves hitting us on the nose.

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    The combination of the shallow shelf and the long fetch made for short steep waves.

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    We finally saw the bell buoy Q62 at sunset.

    A nice sight good old Q62 bell buoy off Point Grey

    And turned east into the darkness as the wind started to freshen up behind us.

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    Dominique at the helm

     

    We tied up the boat in the dark and were quite happy to stop in the club for a bite to eat, warm up and watch the final game of the regular season for the Whitecaps on the television in the corner.

  • Sailing on Sylvia

    This August we had the pleasure of spending two weeks aboard my friends Ranger 33 Sylvia. We set out from Victoria on August 15th to explore the Gulf Islands National Park reserve as well as a few other anchorages.

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    I’ve created a Flickr group album

    with loads of pictures from the trip https://flic.kr/g/q6NHB

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  • Petit tour a Manning Park

    Nous avons fait un petit tour a Manning Park a 2h 30minutes de Vancouver pour trois nuits juste avant Noël. On a eu la chance d’avoir de la neige, et d’avoir Brigitte et Maël avec nous.

    Loic et Itziar se sont vite mi au ski de fond.

  • Boxing Day: everyone has their own traditions

    In the spirit of making memories and not garbage; I met with my friends Ian, Dominique and Frederich for a stand up paddle around English Bay. Starting at the place that links us all. The Jericho Sailing Centre somehow courses through our veins, with a deep connection to the ocean, non powered recreation and fun.

    Boxing Day paddle

    We met at 9:30am and set out to paddle around the tugboat boy just west of the entrance to False Creek. There we met two busy bald eagles who had taken up temporary residence to feast on what seemed to be a recently caught seagull carcass.

    Boxing Day paddle in English bay. Watched two eagles eating a seagull on the tugboat bouy

    Eagle on Tugboat Boy
    We the headed west with the current and paid a visit to one of the dozen freighters at anchor waiting in the bay for its turn to load up on Canadian cargo.
    The weather could not have been milder, I was overheating a little in my wetsuit. I was very happy to spend my Boxing Day morning this way.

    Freighter Bulb4

    Freighter Bulb