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A Baptizing Experienceby Christopher McElroy | ||
As I had done in the past, much time is spent going over the basics. You spend an exorbitant amount of time teaching these eager guys how to carry the boat. Time is spent relaying the proper etiquette of stepping in, tying in, holding the oar, setting the boat while they are not rowing, etc. You refresh their memory about terms from the rowing lexicon; port, starboard, bow and stern. As the tutorial of some 50+ oarsmen continues I begin to notice them notice crews rowing by the dock. These guys are ready to piece Penn and I am trying to make sure they understand rowing terminology and procedures which not only provides for a pleasant rowing experience but is also intended to provide a safe environment.
Right from the onset I wanted these guys to appreciate and respect not only the equipment, which is expensive, but the water as well, which is not only cold but fast as the winter thaw provides a swift current which leads to the Fairmount dam. Making many successful outings, one eight at a time, I finally get down to the last group of 9 guys to make a "go of it." It is the last shift to make this brief but much anticipated venture. The lesson is going quite well. Many single stroke drills. Many pause drills. A lot of time is spent rowing continuously by pairs. Then by fours, then sixes.
We approach the dock I can see the smiles on these guys' faces. Many hours have been spent at the boathouse on this day. It has been a good day. I race ahead to catch the eight as it approaches the dock to land on its port side. Even the coxswain performed well as docking at Penn A.C. is not the easiest of tasks when the river is high and so tight of a turn must be made rounding the lighthouse, which is positioned at the top of Boathouse Row.
I grabbed the port side blades to pull these guys to the dock. I turn my back to unload the launch. When I turn back again to face the eight, I stood stunned and amazed as I notice that the starboard guys have removed their oars from the locks while they are still sitting in the boat. I did not want to alarm them about their impending misfortune so I quickly moved towards the boat. As I got closer I noticed the port riggers begin to lift off the dock. I reached for the closest rigger I could find to somehow hold the port side riggers down.
The weight of the entire crew and the lateral momentum that had already begun was no match for this coach. Unfortunately, the sleeve of the coat that I had been wearing was somehow tangled in the oarlock or in the angle of the main and back stays. With the boat continuing to turn and pick up speed as it did, I was hurled in to the drink as if I was an object in the basket of a catapult. When I surfaced from the frigid waters, some ten yards away from the dock, there was chaos mixed with embarrassment.
All members of the crew and I were now treading water. The boat had righted itself but was now full to the gunwales of water. All eight oars were now in the water floating every which way. Some of the bystanders on the dock aided in pulling the crew out of the water while I swam to recover the oars. Finally, everyone was out of the water and all crew members and equipment was accounted for, safe and sound. The entire episode took place as anxious parents waited to pick up their sons after their first day of on-the-water practice.
This all took place on my birthday. What a gift.
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A Gus Ignas Classicby Chris O'Brien | ||
After about two weeks of flailing around on our
own with no coaching, the legendary Gus Ignas decided that he was going to
take us under his wing and make top notch scullers out of us. He always
started any sentance directed at us as, "Now, men..." before going on to
enlighten us with his unique brand of wisdom gathered over years of pounding
up and down the Schuylkill and standing behind his bar in East Falls.
The first Saturday after Gus started working with us is one of the
few practices that I can distinctly remember from the hundreds that I took
part in throughout my career. Since we were always at the bottom of the
depth chart (i.e. "run up to the Canoe Club, try to wave me down and I might
care enough to come switch you into the last boat"), none of us had ever
rowed for more than six miles at a shot. Gus came roaring into the
boathouse at around 9 and sent us on our way upriver. We did all kinds of
drills and short pieces on the one hour round trip from Boathouse Row and we
were shocked to hear "spin it" as we glided past the Viking statute.
So, being dutiful young Catholic schoolboys, we did as we were commanded and
started back up river, expecting to go no further than Girard Avenue before
the return trip to the boathouse was ordered. That order never came, so we
made a second full six mile round trip in this pig of a boat with the sun
beating down on us and Gus screaming instructions at us. My hands were
blistered raw by this point because the grips on our oars were basically in
tatters. There was also no water in the boat with which to even wet my
mouth or rinse the blood from my hands. At this point, he had us spin the
boat again and slog through another six mile round trip. I swore that I
would either kill Gus when I got out of the boat (if I ever did) or I would
never get in a boat again.
After three hours in the broiling summer sun and
18 miles in an underpowered, overweight boat, he allowed us to go in to the
dock but told us to stay in the boat once we pulled up alongside the slip.
At this point, Gus hops out of his launch and starts in with, "Now, men, I
am very proud of the way you handled this practice. It was tough and you
gutted it out. Before you get out, there is one more lesson that I need to
pass along to you today. When you are sitting at the dock like this, never
lift your oars up off the dock like this." With that, he demonstrated just
how high an oar had to go before the old Pocock quad would tip and then
laughed hysterically at us as the boat rolled over and dumped us into the
muck of the Schuylkill. There were all kinds of people up on the balcony
who were absolutely roaring at us as we righted the boat and climbed on to
the dock. Then, to top it all off, Gus says, "now get your boat out and put
it away" as he turned to go home.
To this day, I still am unsure how we
managed to get the boat out of the water without doing permanent damage
either to it or ourselves, but we did manage to get it out and put away by
ourselves. I wasn't really sure what the lesson in all of this was at the
time as I wondered what the hidden message was, but in retrospect, I think
that Gus actually wanted us to see that you could tip a boat on the dock and
could think of no better way than to demonstrate it to us after an 18 mile
row.
He was one of the great characters on Boathouse Row and I have related
this story to countless people who knew the man very well who just laughed
and said, "that's Gus" with no other explanations offered. For some reason,
I just couldn't keep my promise to never get back in a boat again either-
once you have felt the bottom of the Schuylkill swallow your legs to
mid-thigh, there is no where to go in rowing but up. | ||
Lookoutby Ransom Weaver | ||
Our Filippi 2x hit their bow rigger square on the middle riggerstay,
demolishing it. Damage to the 2x confined to a little crunching of the
tip under the bowball. Dorland got a good gouge to his ass where he hit
my pacecoach mount, and we both had sprainy-feeling ankles from being
ripped from the shoes.
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Hypothermiaby Robin Jones | ||
I was a Coast Guard officer for a number of years and thoroughly familiar with hypothermia as a theoretical concept. This past December I got a chilling lesson in the reality of it.
I was rowing an old VanDusen single in the middle of the Schuylkill in what was probably 35-degree water, wearing shorts, a tee and two sweatshirts. In the middle of a series of full power strokes the aged plastic in one of the old pattern oarlocks gave way. The boat flipped, immersing me totally. Hypothermia charts say that it a person will slip into unconsciousness in less than 15 minutes in 35-degree water; the danger point comes much faster than that.
I kicked out of the shoes, surfaced and hauled myself up as far as I could on the overturned hull. The cold began to penetrate immediately; I could feel my strength and sense of feeling failing rapidly and I had been in the water less than a minute. My coach was about 50 yards away with another boat. She was along side in less than another minute but after even that short exposure to the cold water it was a real effort to haul myself into the launch. I stripped off my wet shirts (he cold air actually felt warmer against my skin than the wet fabric) and donned a couple of spare jackets that were carried in the launch against just such an emergency. Even after drying off and getting into fresh clothes at the boathouse it was a good hour before I could honestly say that I had fully recovered from that dunking.
That morning I was looking forward to a very intense and productive
technical session. We were only a week from our first real test, a
hometown head race. I was hoping to give them a little more length and a
lot more run before they raced in front of the alumni and my boss next
Saturday.
My athletes started to arrive in pairs and threes, sleepily shuffling along
and not saying much. They automatically started carrying the oars and then
the launch down to the dock. I followed them down the hill to start
working on getting the motor started. Being the new coach in town, I had
the bathtub launch with the temperamental motor. I got in, primed the pump
and pulled the cord a half-dozen times. I was getting ready to pull the
cover off of the motor when one of my athletes ran down to the dock. She
said that one of the coxswains needed my help with something, so I told her
I would be right there.
I was kind of annoyed that my crews were not on the dock already, so in the
interest of time I tried a new method of exiting the launch. I swung one
leg over the side and made a not-so-graceful leap for the dock. I cleared
the side of the bathtub easily, but both legs somehow missed the dock
entirely. In one slick maneuver I half-landed on the dock nose-first, with
most of my body splashing down into the freezing water. However, I managed
to catch the edge of the dock with my hands. In a purely reflexive motion
I hoisted myself up and lay beached on the dock. Once out of the water the
first thing I did was look wildly around for witnesses. My nose was
throbbing and my vision was swimming, but I was amazed to realize no one at
our busy boathouse had seen me fall.
I stood up and gingerly touched my nose, which felt about five times its
normal size. I heard "heads up" and realized one of my eights was walking
down the ramp to the dock. I immediately decided to play it cool and tried
to look nonchalant. The coxswain told me she had fixed the problem and the
other boats were on the way out. I tried to smile and nod and searched her
face to see if she noticed my nose was purple and I was dripping wet from
the chest down. I didn't even get a second glance. I thought for a second
about dry clothes, but realized I had none and so climbed back in the
launch to try the motor again.
This time I got the launch started and pulled up next to the first eight.
I tried to speak to them but I still couldn't see that well and my whole
head was throbbing, so I just rode along next to them for the first ten
minutes of practice. The cold wind helped numb my face and I gradually
forgot my wet clothes - we ended up having a pretty successful session
after all.
When we got back to the dock my very thoughtful boyfriend was waiting with
a cup of hot coffee. He took one look at me and asked me what on earth
happened out there? I told him and he just shook his head and drove me to
the emergency room to get my nose looked at.
Luckily it was a nice clean break across the bridge - no surgery required.
The doctor saw my permanent stitches on the X-Ray from the other two times
I had broken my nose and had it straightened back out…but those are other
stories for another day. It took me a few months before I finally told my
athletes what had happened that morning. By the time I told them I had
already established my reputation as a klutz, so they were not surprised.
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