I posted a clip of this on the team’s Instagram earlier but wanted to share the full video to highlight the new fin on our Empacher. If you’ve emailed me at any point in the last four years about not being able to take tight turns with your normal Resolute or Empacher fins, have your coach check out the Carl Douglas “AeRowFin”.
Not to take away from Riker’s steering here because he did a great job but compared to what Weeks looks like with the normal Empacher rudder, this was so much tighter and smoother. Before, even with the rudder all the way over and one side powered down, the turn would take longer and you could still end up on the opposite side of the river which was obviously super frustrating for both the coxswains and the coaches. This Carl Douglas fin though is magical. Definitely recommend checking it out.
Related: HOCR: Weeks, Lowell House, and “The Turning Tree”
Some context for the video – we were doing 3′-2′-1′ steady state at 18-20-24spm through the Powerhouse and then built to 30spm at full pressure for 20ish strokes through the bridge.
Shout out to the Radcliffe coach in the launch at the end too.
Nice video, did you also investigate the canard that they also offer? Their own advertising push the idea that the canard helps reduce the drag incurred when steering which would be pretty useful on as windy a course as the Charles I would imagine
http://www.carldouglasrowing.com/Steering_Shell_control
Not sure, actually. Wind on the river itself isn’t really that big of an issue most of the time – it’s more protected than the basin so there are only a couple spots where it’ll get choppy but it’s nothing too awful. The basin is where it gets really rough and it’s easily avoidable if/when you don’t wanna deal with it. Something like this could be useful if you’re somewhere that consistently deals with a wind problem but here, it’d probably just be overkill (and one more fin that could potentially get knocked off or damaged or whatever else).
Curse the English language! Windy as in with many bends not air moving fast 🙂 – the canard is supposed to help prevent the loss of speed when the rudder is on by helping prevent the boat “skid” when turning although it also helps prevent the boat being pushed around by wind (originally it was made for the GB 8+ in Sydney for the expected crosswinds which never actually happened so it wasnt used in the race)
Lol “windy” in that sense didn’t even occur to me. 😂