More oceanic rowing at Earl's Court

James Ketchell (above) aims to break the record for rowing solo across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Antigua, which he aims to do in December 2009. He expects to be at the oars for 12 hours a day in 100 degrees heat. Click here for more details.
In April, Chris Martin and Mick Dawson (below) will set off from Choshi, Japan and row for San Francisco, in an attempt to become the first crew ever to row unsupported across the north Pacific. Take a look here and step back in admiration.

Oceanic Rowing

Last year, an exhibit at the Sail Power and Watersports Show at Earls Court showed that the Atlantic had become a virtual Piccadilly Circus of rowers, with crews crossing almost weekly.
In 2009, rowers are crossing the other oceans as well. This year's show is wedged out with boats that are going to cross the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, and one intrepid sculler plans to row the Atlantic solo.
Today, the Indian Ocean race.
The Woodvale Challenge pits rowers against the Indian Ocean, racing from Geraldton, Western Australia, to Mauritius, a 31,000 mile row that will take the fours about 60 days and doubles 80 days.
Two of the boats were on show at Earls Court. The Ocean Angels hope to be the first female crew to row across the Indian Ocean. Their flyer says in big letters they will be rowing NAKED, but before all you lecherous males book your tickets for Geraldton they made it quite clear they were going to row out of helicopter range of the Australian coast before they strip off.
Angels Amy, Fiona and Jo were on the stand and fizzed with enthusiasm and fear in equal measures. Fiona rowed the Atlantic last year, and Amy was a leading light of La Figarow, the crew of the waterman's cutter that, to quote Amy, was 'first across the finishing line' in the London to Paris race earlier this year (for an alternative version, click here). Jo plays hockey and is a chartered surveyor, and is wondering what she has let herself in for.
The picture is rubbish because I had accidentally knocked the camera's settings thingy to 'crap'.
Guy Watts and Andrew Delaney have a brand new Rossiter boat and are going for two records - the first pair crew to cross the Indian Ocean and the youngest (they are both 25). Guy is pictured in his boat, unfortunately looking as though his head is being cut off by a strap.
So sorry about the pics. But best of luck to both crews - I personally think you are all bonkers, but in a nice way. And the cancer charities they are supporting are very worthwhile, so visit their websites and sponsor them now!

Row up the Hamble on Sunday

Max Taylor and I plan to row up the Hamble on Sunday, Nov 30.
Plan A: Launch at Swanwick Hard, Shore Road, at about 11. Row up to Horse and Jockey, Curbridge. Have lunch. Row back.
Plan B: Turn up at Swanwick Hard, stare glumly through windscreen at driving rain. Go to nearby pub.

New sculling boat at Earl's Court

An exciting new rowing boat is being launched at the Sail, Power and Watersports Show at Earls Court this week. Paul Zink writes from lovely Clovelly in Devon:

Hello Chris,

I've recently picked up your blog from earlier this year on sliding riggers. Did you get round to setting up a boat with a sliding rigger?

I have been sculling with a sliding rigger on the open sea for the past four years. Apart from its slightly better performance on flat water it has proved to be greatly superior in rough conditions. With the fixed seat, one feels much more part of the boat, resulting in greater stability, control and ability to maintain a good rhythm.

I was looking for a sporty sculling boat providing a good balance between speed, stability and general seaworthiness. I was not able to find anything that met all my criteria so I set about building my own. I have now built three boats, the second with modifications on the first and the third a complete redesign based on lessons from the first two. The first boat was fitted with a sliding rigger taken off of a standard production boat but after a few months suffered a metal fatigue problem and broke. Boats 2 and 3 have a rigger to my own design.

General reaction to my boat has been such that I have teamed up with a business partner (also a rowing enthusiast) and we are in the process of putting it into production. You can find more details on www.clovellysculls.co.uk. We will be exhibiting at the Earls Court Boat Show (stand Q16) this week. If you happen to be at the show please look for me for a chat about sliding riggers and boats in general.

Yours
Paul Zink

I have yet to try a sliding rigger boat, but they have lots of advantages over sliding seats and my next boat will have sliding riggers. When they were introduced in the 1980s they were banned by rowing's governing body, FISA, because they started winning everything.
But the main advantage from a recreational and sea rowing perspective is that the weight of the rower stays fixed in the boat, eliminating the pitching movement that a sliding seat causes.
Judging by the photos, the Clovelly Scull is a very seaworthy boat indeed and Peter seems confident out there in the Bristol Channel off the rocky North Devon coast.
The Clovelly Scull is a high-tech machine, made from polyester glass foam sandwich and selling at £3700 (inc VAT but exc carriage) if ordered at the show. A unique optional extra is the bipod supporting a front-view mirror and a GPS.
But what really sells it for me is this shot of the Clovelly Scull returning from a trip to Lundy Island, just visible on the horizon fifteen miles away. Perfect.

Rowing in Literature (3)

The finest bedtime reading that literature affords is P.G. Wodehouse, and the other night I came across this description of a rowing expedition in Tried in the Furnace, one of his tales from the Drones Club.
The story so far: Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps has been tricked into taking the Village Mothers of Maiden Eggesford, Somersetshire, on their Annual Outing. Sixteen females of advanced years assembled in a motor coach, demure and docile, but once out of sight of the Vicarage they went wild, hijacking the coach from its intended destination of the Abbey and Museum at the neighbouring village of Bottsford Mortimer and directing it and him to the fleshpots of Bridmouth-on-Sea. After trashing the amusement park, they headed for the beach:

Suddenly the sixteen mothers gave a simultaneous whoop and made for a sailing-boat which was waiting to be hired, sweeping him along with them. And the next moment they were off across the bay, bowling along before a nippy breeze which, naturally, cheezed it abruptly as soon as it had landed them far enough from shore to make things interesting for the unfortunate blighter who had to take to the oars.
This, of course, was poor old Barmy. There was a man in charge of the boat, but he, a rough, untutored salt, had enough sense not to let himself in for a job like rowing this Noah's Ark home. Barmy did put it up to him tentatively, but the fellow said that he had to attend to the steering, and when Barmy said that he, Barmy, knew how to steer, the fellow said that he, the fellow, could not entrust a valuable boat to an amateur. After which, he lit his pipe and lolled back in the stern sheets with rather the air of a Roman banqueter making himself cosy among the cushions. And Barmy, attaching himself to a couple of oars of about the size of those served out to galley-slaves in the old trireme days, started to put his back into it.
For a chap who hadn't rowed anything except a light canoe since he was up at Oxford, he considers he did dashed well, especially when you take into account the fact that he was much hampered by the Mothers. They would insist on singing that thing about 'Give yourself a pat on the back,' and, apart from the fact that Barmy considered something on the lines of the Volga Boat Sone would have been far more fitting, it was a tune that was pretty hard to keep time to. Seven times he caught crabs, and seven times those sixteen Mothers stopped singing and guffawed like one Mother. All in all, a most painful experience. Add the fact that the first thing the females did on hitting the old Homeland again was to get up an informal dance on the sands and that the ride home in the quiet evenfall was more or less a repetition of the journey out, and you wil agree with me that Barmy, as he eventually tottered into the saloon bar of the Goose and Grasshopper, had earned the frothing tankard which he now proceeded to order.

The picture is by the late Beryl Cook (of course).

San Francisco Bay in the springtime

Every year at Easter time, Gordie Nash runs a race out of SF Bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge and back. This video has Gordie explaining the history and ethos of the race, which is similar to marathons - anybody can enter, some row to win, some row to prove they can get round the course, but most row to have fun.
Key facts: 62 boats ranging from 15ft Whitehalls to 25ft double sculls entered. Ages ranged from under 20 to over 80.

Thanks to the IROW forum for the heads up.

The way we were

We tend to assume that bad manners and loutish behaviour were invented by the Mods and Rockers in the 1950s, but it has ever been thus.
In Victorian times yobs threatened to close Henley Royal Regatta. Thousands of Londoners went up by train and hired boats, so many that at one time it was said you could cross the river dryshod by leaping from punt to punt.
Annually through the 1890s W.B Woodgate, Vanity Fair's forthright rowing correspondent, raved about the chaos on the river. Here is a selection of his remarks, dating from 1892 to 1898:

“There were, if possible, more small craft than ever, and worse handled than ever, running amuck and quite devoid of watermanship. . . . It is intolerable that any cripple of a Cockney should be let loose for the day to do more damage that he is worth by incompetency to handle a common tub....
[Most] are largely made up of bounders and counter-jumpers on the spree. These creatures coolly tie up and loll in their boats, blocking the passage and enjoying the nuisance which their lubberly conduct produces....
The incompetence, and in many instances truculence, of non-rowing club cripples in the crowds on the reach becomes more marked each year. It would not be a bad idea for the Thames Conservancy to place some limit upon the presence of these adventurers....
“Keel to the current” is a maxim with all habitués when moving or halting; but duffers think nothing of sprawling broadside to the stream, blocking passage, and thus tangling a dozen or more passers-by in one knot of confusion....
"Then, again, many of these loafers are devoid of good taste, as well as of watermanship. Thus a brace of pariahs deliberately moored their punt, with ryepecked poles, in the middle of the Berks side-channel....and then lay down and amused themselves with watching the confusion which their obstruction occasioned. Unfortunately, there was no specific by-law to meet and punish this act of rowdyism this year....
One of the freaks of the normal Cockney on the spree at Henley is to lie in the bow of a progressing boat armed with a boat-hook, and to prod off with the spike all approaching craft, enjoying the fun of spearing timbers and ripping up carvels. There were at least half-a-dozen such mischief-makers on the course this year....
“Punt paddling” should be stopped during Regatta hours. A laden punt, thus propelled, cannot be “held” up sharply -- especially by the class of cripples who indulge in the trick -- when collision is imminent (unlike a row boat); it runs on like a battering-ram, and its iron-shod shelving prow sweeps destructively over gunwales and rowlocks of legitimate craft. It is a form of navigation painfully on the increase, because it commends itself to the unskilfulness of the tyro, and can be learned in minutes, while it takes weeks to learn to punt and months to row decently.

The solution was simple. In 1899 floating booms were chained between the posts that mark the regatta course to prevent the oiks mooring to them. People still hired boats in incredible numbers, however, as the picture above shows - it was taken in 1914. Nowadays race-watchers come by car and the urge to get out on the water seems to have abated.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the information and the image.