Tag: equipment

High School Q&A

Question of the Day

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Hey! Our eight boat leaks really badly but there are no recognizable holes or scratches so the bottom of the boat fills up with about three inches of water at the end of every practice, making it really heavy and hard to get out of the water. Also it’s a really old boat so it is really heavy as it is. The group that rows in that boat is made up of entirely high school freshmen girls who are new to the sport of rowing either during the fall season or even as soon as three weeks ago. Our coach really wants us to learn how to carry the boat with only 8 people but it is nearly impossible, even for the varsity girls. Is it justified for us to ask for a couple more people to help lift and carry it? And is there any way to fix a boat where nothing seems to be wrong? Thanks!

I totally get why your coach wants you to be able to carry the boat with just eight people but I see your point too. When I was coaching my high school team last year (and when I was on the team) we would use this hilarious old wooden four  during practice that was so heavy and such a pain in the ass to lift, especially when the women using it were all 110lb novices. For the first few weeks we’d always have a couple extra people help them out with carrying it but eventually they were able to do it themselves.

Ultimately though it comes down to one really simple yes or no question – can you lift and carry the boat with eight people without risking the integrity of the equipment and/or the safety of the rowers? If not then you should either ask to use a different boat until you can figure out what’s wrong with this one or ask a few other people to help you carry it. By a few other people I mean like two at most, simply because you do have to get used to carrying it without the extra help and it’s harder to do that when you’ve got four or six additional people on there.

I don’t know nearly enough about boat building or repair to know what could be causing the leaking issues, let alone how to fix something like that. The only thing that comes to mind is the vent caps not being closed (or at the very least not being closed all the way) and water getting in through there but I feel like that’s a really simple/obvious issue that someone probably would have noticed by now. If anyone has any ideas or has dealt with something similar, please leave a comment! Your best bet though (and by “your” I mean your coach since that’s his/her responsibility) would probably be to contact whoever the manufacturer is and get their opinion/advice. It might come down to the boat’s age being the issue but if it’s something that can be fixed then the boat reps would definitely be able to tell you what needs to be done.

How To Video of the Week

Video of the Week: How to make minor shell repairs

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While this kind of stuff is best left to boatmen and coaches I still think it’s worth knowing how to do (even though you should never actually attempt this on your own). Coxswains especially, this should give you a good idea as to how time-intensive these repairs are, so the next time you have a close call with a log on the water or a rigger on land, keep this video in mind.

Video of the Week

Video of the Week: How it’s made, pt. 2

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By now you’ve probably seen the episode of “How It’s Made” that details the production of a racing shell. This video is similar to that and shows the process of creating wooden composite shells by UK-based Carl Douglas Racing Shells. It’s cool seeing the craftsmanship behind it, especially since that’s not something that we probably think about that much.

Related: How it’s made

Whenever I watch videos like this one thing they always do is make me hyper-aware the next time I’m on the water because now that I’ve seen what goes into creating the shell that I’m now sitting in, I feel a heightened sense of responsibility to make smart(er) steering decisions so as to avoid hitting or damaging anything. That’s definitely something I hope you guys take away from this too, just a better overall understanding and appreciation for the time and effort that goes into creating the equipment we use every day.

Coxing Q&A

Question of the Day

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Hi, this is quite important as I have a race tomorrow, sorry it’s short notice and I completely understand if you don’t have time to answer this. Anyways I have taken my CoxBox home to charge before the race (as usual). I plug it in and it says 46% battery, 5 mins later it’s at 100%, so I switched it on and off to double check and it goes back to 46% or lower. I need as much charge in as possible as it’s a long race, and we’ll be on the water for 2+ hours. I don’t know how to fix it! I have tried also leaving it on charge all day and night, but again the same thing happens, it goes to 100% then when taken off charge back down to 46% or less. It’s always roughly the same number it goes back down to. Sorry if it doesn’t make much sense… bit stressed!!! 🙂

That’s odd. Off the top of my head I’d say try resetting the battery but that requires more time than it sounds like you have. If you can’t borrow another cox box (which you should try to do) then you’ll just have to find a way to deal with this one. Make sure your coach and crew know ahead of time that you’re having issues with it and then plan to use it as little as possible tomorrow before the race actually starts. Once it’s in the boat just leave it off until maybe 5 minutes before your race starts. Yea, that means you’ll have to project a little more than usual but if people are quiet and paying attention it shouldn’t be much of an issue. Make sure you’re fully hydrated beforehand too since this will help keep you from losing your voice. If it stays at 46% then I’d guess you’ll get maybe an hour or so out of it, provided you don’t have the volume up super loud, so just make sure you plan accordingly.

Q&A Rowing Technique

Question of the Day

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The other day our coach had all of us move our foot stretchers all the way forward on the tracks. I was wondering what the benefit of doing this is?

Trying not to overthink this too much but my guess is that your coach is just trying to have everyone get a sharper catch angle since adjusting the stretchers has a much greater effect on the catch than it does the finish. The closer to the stern your feet are the closer to parallel the oar will be at the catch and the more shallow of a release angle you’ll have (it’ll be nearly perfectly perpendicular to the boat compared to being at a 20 degree angle or so otherwise).

Just going off what I’ve picked up from coaches and boatmen in the past, I think he’s probably just trying to avoid rigging seats individually (be that out of laziness or because of some other reason, I don’t know). If a longer catch angle is what he’s going for though, I’m not sure if this is necessarily the best way to approach it, although I guess if you’re all novices (and/or short…) then it could be a temporary thing as you work on developing better flexibility and mobility throughout the fall/winter. Still, if he’s trying to go for uniformity with one aspect of the stroke the catch isn’t what he should be going for, it should be the finish since you don’t have to contend as much with individual flexibility issues, amongst other things.

Q&A Rowing

Question of the Day

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I am about average height for a rower but I have really small feet (like a size 6) and almost all of the shoes in the boats we have are size 12. Some I am able to tighten so it’s not too bad but in some of our older eights and fours its almost impossible. There have been several times when my feet have come out because they are not secure. Do you have any ideas of how to fix this?

Ah yes, the plight of the small-footed rower. (I can wear a size 2 in kids shoes so I sympathize with #smallfeetproblems.) The few times that I’ve gotten in a boat to row I’ve taken two pairs of extra socks that I have in my car and stuffed them up in the top of the shoe. It’s not the best solution but it’s not the worst either. I’m going to defer this question to the rowers out there though because outside of just dealing with it, I genuinely have no idea what you could do in this situation.

Help us out, guys – how do you deal with shoes that are too big for your feet? Is it just a matter of “sucking it up” or is there an actual tried-and-true solution?

Q&A Rowing Technique

Question of the Day

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Hey Kayleigh, I was hoping you could lend some advice on spacers, the correct positioning of your body in relation to the pin, and how to change these things either before you are out on the water or while you are out on the water. I was told that when in doubt to take a spacer off… is that the rule of thumb? It is different due to the type/make of the boat? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Changing the positioning of the spacers effects the height of the oarlock, which will then correspond to how easy or hard it is for you to get your blade out of the water. To adjust the spacers, all you’ve gotta do is pull them off (which takes some muscle) and reposition them either below the oarlock to add height or above the oarlock to lower the height. This is how it’s done across the board, regardless of the type or make of the boat. I’d recommend doing it on land, if you can, when the oarlock itself is dry. It’s much easier trying to get them off when the boat’s not tipping to the side and your fingers aren’t wet and slippery. Doing it on the water pretty much guarantees you’ll lose one if you do manage to get it off and unless your coach or coxswain has spares out with them, you’ll be stuck rowing with the oarlock lower than you want it. I’ve never heard the rule of thumb about removing spacers and couldn’t find much when I Googled it so that might just be what your coach has found worked best in his/her experience.

Where your body is in relation to the pin (aka your catch angle) relates to the positioning of your foot stretchers, your flexibility, and your skill level. Whenever you hear someone talking about rowing through the pin or rowing through the “work”, what they’re referring to is where your hips and seat are in relation to the pin when you’re at full compression. You want to make sure you’ve achieved your full body angle ahead of the pin so that when you reach full compression, the relation of your seat to the pin is accurate. When you’re sculling I think you’re supposed to be even with the pins but with the larger sweep boats you’ll typically go a couple centimeters past that (a couple being 1 or 2cm). If you’re (excessively) in front of the pin then you’re going to have a very steep catch angle, which is going to cause you to have mostly ineffective stroke due to the excessive load you have to contend with. It also puts a lot of unnecessary stress on your low back. If you don’t reach full compression then you’re going to be behind the pin and have a very shallow catch angle, which is also ineffective since you’re not loading the blade enough.

Regarding your foot stretchers, if they’re too far up (closer to the stern) then you’re likely to be too far in front of the pin and if they’re too far back (closer to the bow) then you’ll be too far behind it. If that’s the issue then you can easily fix that on the water by removing your feet, loosening (but not removing) the wing nuts, and moving the stretchers forwards or backwards. You can do it on land too if you’ve got the boat upright in slings. I wouldn’t recommend trying to do it with the boat on the racks because there’s always that risk that you’ll loosen everything too much and the stretchers will fall on your face.

Don’t overtighten your riggers

Rowing

Don’t overtighten your riggers

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So lately our varsity eight hasn’t been having the best time on the water and we found out yesterday what was causing the majority of their problems: the rib in the boat where 5-seat’s rigger attaches is broken due to being way overtightened over the years. This contributed to a lot of the set problems because … physics. I didn’t get to hear the full explanation because I was trying to do something else but suffice it to say, a broken rib in the boat pulls the rigger lower on that side, changes how force is applied through the water, and makes it very difficult for that rower to get their blade out of the water, amongst other things. Until we can get it fixed, we had to put the 5-seat rigger on port and move the 4-seat rigger to starboard, so we’ve got a weird bucket rig configuration going on in the middle of the boat.

We got this particular shell in 2004 when I was a junior, so it’s only 10 years old and the hope is that it lasts a couple more years before the team’s gotta buy a new shell. They just bought two new Resolutes within the last couple of years but that isn’t something that we (or most other teams) can afford to do on a regular basis, which is why taking care of the equipment is so important.

When you put your riggers on, only tighten the bolts finger tight, meaning no tighter than you can naturally turn them with your fingers. Your coxswain or coach will then go through with the wrench and tighten them more if necessary. There’s a lot more to the rigging of a boat than just tightening a few nuts and bolts (check out the “intro to rigging” tag for more on this) and if something happens where they end up too tight or too loose, the integrity of the entire shell’s rigging could be compromised, in addition to the height, pitch, spread, etc. of that individual seat.

Below are a couple pictures I snapped yesterday before we went out that show what the rib should look like (the first photo) compared to what the broken one looks like (middle two photos). You can see how it’s buckled from someone getting a little too aggressive with their wrench. The fourth photo shows a rib that hasn’t broken yet but is getting close because of the same thing.

Take care of your equipment and make sure you spend the time showing and explaining how the riggers should be put on to the new people at your club.

Coxing Q&A

Question of the Day

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Hey! So my novice team has about 5 boats with coxswains and 2 cox boxes. The novice girls have 5 boats and 5 cox boxes and the varsity all have enough also. It is really annoying when we go on the water and three coxswains don’t have cox boxes or are stuck with a cox box mini (we have one) or cox box (also only one). The coxswains on the team all really want functioning cox boxes, so how do you think we should go about asking our coach about it (or rather if we even should ask)?

You should definitely ask for several reasons but the biggest reason is for safety. For some reason this always gets overlooked and I cannot for the life of me understand why since everyone always says it’s their number one priority. If you don’t have a cox box, everything you say (or yell, rather) is only going as far as 7-seat, maybe. If you’re in a bow loader, your bow man is probably the only person who hears you (as long as there’s a headwind). That’s annoying when you’re trying to make calls, especially to novices, but it’s a HUGE problem if you get into a dangerous situation and need to have everyone’s attention. If you’re in bad weather and it’s raining and really windy, there’s no way anyone can hear what you’re saying which makes it difficult if you’re trying to get your point, rowing in a strong current, trying to dock, etc.

I would bring this up to your coach(es), in addition to any other issues you’ve encountered by not having one. My one caution though would be to not say you want one just because everyone else has one. If your coach really needs to be convinced, ask them how well a boat would function if you only had 5 oars instead of eight or if only half of the seats were slid back and forth. That’s similar to the disadvantage your boat is at when the coxswain doesn’t have their one crucial piece of equipment.

Cox boxes are expensive though so I guess if you want to look for a reason to justify why not every coxswain has their own, this is that reason. Between the cox box, mic, charger, and case it totals something like $680. Multiply that by three and that’s over $2000 (which is ridiculous given how limited the cox boxes are…). Coaches, parent/executive boards, etc. see that and say “no way” because they’d rather spend the money on riggers, oars, boats, travel, etc.

When you talk to your coaches, go in knowing how much the three cox boxes would cost your team and a plan for how you plan on raising the money to purchase them and/or a plan to search for and acquire used cox boxes from other teams. Linked below is a post on fundraising that you can use for inspiration if you need some ideas.

Related: How to raising money for your club team

If you’re interested in buying them used, I’d suggest posting an ad on row2k in their classifieds section under “Accessories Wanted”. You could also post it under “Oars and Equipment Wanted” for additional exposure. Make sure you list the contact info of whoever is in charge of the search (even if you’re doing the work, I’d put a parent or coach as the contact person) and the price you’re willing to pay (make sure it’s fair and reasonable!).