row2k Features
Rigger Tricks
The Cup-Cup Cup Holder
September 3, 2014
row2k hackers

Tired of spilling coffee in your launch? Here is a hack from a coach who got tired of cleaning spilled coffee out of the launches at his place, and it is a pretty clever re-purposing of some spare cox-box holders that does the trick: we'll dub it The Cup-Cup Cup Holder.

This hack came Monica Hilcu on the west coast, who told us about how coach Joe O'Connor at the Stanford Rowing Center solved those pesky spills once and for all.

"Joe was tired of finding spilled coffee in the coaching launches, so we found some extra plastic cox box holders," she said. "He took the first one and screwed it to the launch bench. He cut the bottom of the second cup off, and then he epoxied the two cups together to make the ultimate coffee cup holder. Little did Joe know it also works great as a megaphone holder and a sweet spot for your cell phone.

It sounds like a great fix, especially since the inevitable mid-practice spilling of your morning (or late afternoon) coffee may be the one bane of rowing coaches that trumps even powerboat wakes and traffic pattern violations. Sure, some fancy coaching launches have real cup holders, but for the masses out there still coaching in jon-boats and aluminum V-hulls, where the only cup-holder is that hand which is not on the tiller or the megaphone (or holding the stroke watch!), spilled coffee is just part of the daily drill and in those launches, it is even less fun, since the spill swirls around your feet for the rest of the outing.

So if you have some time before the fall racing season heats up, you might want to dig around the old spare parts box and find a few unloved cox-box holders. The coaches who've started using this hack swear that it keeps the coffee warmer longer, too - but any coffee you can still be drinking instead of sitting in halfway through practice sounds worth a few moments of good hacking to us.

Has somebody at your boathouse come up with a clever hack that makes daily practice a bit better? Share your tips--and hacks--in the comments below.

This hack came to us from a loyal reader, so if you have a great rowing hack to suggest for future inclusion, send it to us!

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