Casey Baker, who has been featured here before, recently wrote to me about damage to the bottom of shells. He has been noticing it due to the hard Nalgene water bottles that many rowers are using. Casey is currently the Southern rep for Resolute Racing Shells and sees a lot of boats at all the races he attends.
According to Casey what causes the problem is that during practices rowers store the bottles in the bottom of the boat. The bottles tend to roll around and if there is any sand or grit the bottle can cause wear that actually goes through the inner skin of the boat.
This can especially be a problem in wade-in launching situations, and also may be an issue in saltwater programs since salt can act as an abrasive, like sand.
A simple solution that Casey recommends is to put a sock around your water bottle. Another is to get a padded water bottle holder and clip it to the heels of your feet. Pad it and/or prevent it from moving as much as possible.
Casey (and I) hope this keeps some of you from needing unnecessary repairs!
A post yesterday on Row2k got me thinking about this. Rowing equipment can go wrong at any race, and it certainly can at the BIG races, such as the World Championships or the Olympics.
Sometimes the results of those equipment failures can be small, such as a short equipment delay or a restart of a race.
Other times they can be devastating, such as this example. A high-tech, wonderful shell can certainly be stopped dead by a 49 cent fastener.
If you have a chance, check out a rowing coach while her race is coming down the course. It might look like she is holding her breath.
Sharing is part of rowing—for example we share the water we row on with many people. Anyone who grew up with brothers or sisters knows that sharing can involve hassles. One of these hassles is who do you turn to when you are having a conflict.
For rowers an area of potential conflict is the wakes generated by other boats. All vessels (including coaching launches!) are responsible for damage that their wake may cause, and wakes can definitely cause damage.
If you have a problem with someone’s wake you basically have two solutions—you solve it or someone else does.
Often the best recourse is to attempt to solve the conflict yourself. Do this by having a conversation with the individual that made the wake—an intelligent conversation—not a yelling match. In most cases drivers of boats don’t realize how fragile a shell is or how much damage their wake can cause. They may not even be aware of what their wake is doing. In these cases a polite and intelligent conversation may get to a resolution quickly.
But unfortunately you may find that the driver’s behavior, or the situation, may make the first solution difficult—then I suggest you take the second recourse (especially if any damage has been caused). The steps here are simple:
Record as much information about the offending boat as possible (bow number, boat name, description)
Get a witness (if possible)
Report the information to the authorities
If the offending boat it is a commercial vessel then you should contact the United States Coast Guard directly. If the boat is privately owned then the information should be reported to your local authorities. Exactly who that authority is will depend on your area—it may be the county sheriff, marine patrol, or Department of Natural Resources. To find out who to report to you may need to make several phone calls.
An oar grip is an incredibly important place - it is where the rower meets the oar. If that grip is not ready to race, the rower won’t be either. Today, most (but not all) grips are made of synthetics. There are many different types of materials, sizes, and colors used. Regardless of these differences I found one commonality—if the grip is not clean it can be very difficult for the rower to have it do what she wants it to do. Over time a grip can get dirty with such things as skin, sweat, blood, oil, plain old dirt, or aging pieces of the surface layer of the grip. All of these can add up to cover an oar grip with a slippery coating. Dirty grips will slip in a rower’s hand and if a dirty grip gets wet it can be extremely difficult to control. A clean grip is easier to control, and as I wrote about before it can also cut down on infections. Continue Reading »
I’ve written at length about the importance of keeping your shell’s hull clean. And along that line, I’ve just received the following email:
Mike:
Maybe you can help with this one. We have a 1 year old Vespoli light 8, painted white. It’s shell was pristine until our last race, when the boats were parked on the trailer underneath an oak tree. It rained heavily all night and was over 90 degrees F the next day before the shell was taken off the trailer and re-rigged. The part of the shell that was under the tree now has dark blue/black spots on it, and you can clearly see where the straps were because that is the only part of the boat that is still white.
We think the blackish residue, which would not come off unless we used our fingernails, is sap from the tree. We scrubbed the boat with soapy water for an hour without result. Have you heard of this before, and what cleaners or brushes should be use to take it off?
Coach asks a great question, and there are three distinct reasons why a clean hull is important. First, the boat will look better. As our coach noted in the email, hulls do get dirty. Happens all the time. And when they are dirty they don’t look happy. And when a boat is not happy you won’t get the most out of it that you could if it was happy. Sounds rather strange, but it often works that way. Continue Reading »
Too often the straps we use to secure our rowing shells get abused to the point of revolt. The revolt can range from something small— such as getting all knotted, to something catastrophic—such as fraying or breaking at the worst possible moment.
Straps need TLA—tender loving attention. They don’t need a lot of it, but you have to give them some. If not, you WILL have a revolt. Guaranteed.
The video shows one simple thing you can do to prove to your strap that you love it, and help it be there for you when you need it. I call it the Page Roll. Rob Page was a coxswain of note for our team several years ago and he showed me this simple way to store our straps while at the same time checking them for problems (such as fraying) that could indicate the strap might fail at when you needed it most. (The audio may not work, so I’ve included notes below).
It is a fairly simple process:
Step 1: Unfurl the strap, and look it over for any frayed edges. If you see any the strap needs to be replaced, and DON’T use it. Let me be clear about that. It is a BAD (UNSAFE) strap. Get rid of it (for example . . . give it to an athlete for a belt).
Step 2: Take the end and slide it through the large opening of the cam. This is NOT the opening that the strap goes through to be tightened. Pull strap through about eight inches.
Step 3: Begin rolling the strap from the fold in in that is away from the cam buckle. Gentle, and tightly, roll it until you reach the cam.
Step 4: While holding the cam buckle against the roll, take the end that you put through the cam in step 2 and wrap it around the roll. Then put the end through the slot in the buckle. Gently tighten it up.
The strap will now stay neatly in a roll, ready for action when you are. A great benefit to this method is ease of storing. You can get numerous rolled straps in a small space.
Take a look at the back of this truck. What do you notice? (Or more specifically, what don’t you notice?)
This is exactly what I saw the other day when I came out of my hotel room during our recent Spring Training trip. I went to connect the shell trailer to the truck—no hitch. Some time during the night some person decided that he (or she) needed our trailer hitch more than I did.
Hitches are one of those items—like car insurance—that you don’t greatly appreciate until you really need it. And then when you need it to be ready to go, and it is not—whammo. Continue Reading »
We are all suffering pain at the pump right now. However rowing coaches can suffer a level of pain that most other drivers do not have to endure. This picture above should give you some indication of what I mean.
More boats and rowing equipment are damaged in transit than while in actual use. Although I haven’t seen statistics to back me up on this, I would venture a guess that a significant about of that damage happens while fueling on trips. I have had several coach-friends tell me “bummer” stories about gas station crashes. Continue Reading »
