Day: March 12, 2013

Coxing Novice Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Do you have any inspirational thoughts/advice for novice cox’s first spring race?

As far as inspirational thoughts go, check out the “motivation” tag, as well as the “quotes” tag. There’s bound to be something in there that strikes you.

Advice-wise…

Know the rules.

Have a plan (or two or three) and go over it with your boat.

Accept the fact that things rarely go as planned. Stay calm and be flexible.

Have a good attitude, regardless of the outcome.

Breathe at the starting line.

Don’t dwell on anything that goes wrong.

Record yourself.

Be a little nervous but never panicked.

Tell the other teams at the finish line “good race” even if you lose and especially if you win.

Steer straight.

Don’t tell your rowers to “pull harder”.

Embrace everything but when it’s time to race, put your game face and be prepared to go do work. As long as you’re doing your job, there won’t be any time to be nervous about what’s going on.

An Introduction to Rigging: The tools

Coxing Rowing

An Introduction to Rigging: The tools

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Previously: Intro to rigging, spread, and span || Oar length, inboard, and blade profile || Pitch || Rigger height and work through || Rigging and de-rigging a boat

The final post in this rigging series is going to go over a few of the tools you need to rig your boat. There aren’t many and in all likelihood, you’ve already got most or all of these hanging around your boathouse somewhere.

Pitch meter

Used to measure pitch, hence the name. The one I have posted here is a manual one from Empacher (Vespoli also sells them) but you can also use your phone if you don’t want to do it manually and haven’t got a digital one on hand. You can check out how to do that in this post from Row2k.

Tape measure

Used for measuring everything else; spread, span, height, etc. Easily found at Lowe’s, Home Depot, or the junk drawer in your kitchen.

7/16″ or 10mm wrench

Every coxswain should have one or more 7/16 or 10mm wrenches, depending on what brand of boat you have. You can also get a coxswain multi-tool which has a few different wrenches built into one. The one above is from JL but Vespoli also sells them. I have two of the Vespoli tools and like them but if given the option I’ll always go with the normal wrenches just because I find them easier to use, particularly when trying to loosen bolts that have been tightened too much. The smaller Vespoli wrenches don’t provide as much leverage so in those cases they can be a little difficult to handle.

The only one of these that you definitely need to own is a wrench – your coach will already have the pitch meter and tape measure in their toolboxes.

Image via // @buchancameron