From Kelly Blazek: This past weekend, Friday Aug 12th, a fire of undetermined origin at the Cleveland Rowing Foundation boathouse claimed 30 privately owned singles, 10 club owned doubles and training shells, and nearly 50 pairs of sculling blades. Many of us scullers got the news while we were at Worcester. The only sculling shells left in Cleveland's fleet are two privately owned singles and four doubles that happened to be at masters nationals with our rowers from Western Reserve Rowing Association.
Our two-story wooden boathouse burned to the ground. See photos here; also posted on www.clevelandrows.org. Four single scullers from Cleveland had bids accepted at the Head of the Charles; three of them lost their shells in the blaze. The entire fleet of sweep boats stored in a nearby steel boathouse are fine. We're trying to sort it all out; thanks to all for their kind words of support. Poor beautiful boats!
Again, there is a second, larger steel boathouse on the property that stored all our sweep boats and the fire never got close to it. St. Ignatius had 2 singles and a double in there, fortunately for their HS program, they still have equipment. We believe the fire was intentional or a stupid accident caused by trespassers and are waiting on a report from our security alarm company on whether the building was broken into that night.