With three weeks to go before the huge event that would conclude (we thought) our tumultuous season, Cushing and Covert brought over a single individual from the disbanding winkies, Jim Moody at 147 pounds. Covert went to three and Moody to bow and the boat went very fast.

This totally defies all ready-made ideas about size in crew. The person whom Moody replaced was much bigger and stronger, yet from the first day the boat went faster.

Three weeks to Philadelphia's Dad Vail, the biggest collegiate regatta in the United States. And here, straight from TOWN AND COUNTRY magazine, some essential explanation:

"The regatta of all regattas came by its odd name in 1934, when its founder, University of Pennsylvania rowing coach Russell "Rusty" Callow named the trophy after his former coach, Harry Emerson "Dad" Vail of the University of Wisconsin. Ironically, Dad Vail himself was never a part of the tournament, which has hosted generations of racers, many of whom return each spring to rendezvous along the river."

Rusty Callow, founder of the Dad Vail, is famous for saying, "I never met an oarsman I didn't like." Bill Stowe is famous for saying, "Yeah, but he never met the Amlong brothers."

I'd like to make Tony Johnson famous for explaining that the Amlong brothers might be about to win a pairs race when the one brother would whap the other in the back of his head and they would both fall out of the boat.

But maybe all of these people are famous enough and it's time for me to get back to the Dad Vail, which Johnson at Georgetown and Stowe at Coast Guard won as coaches. But reader, first let me point out that Charlie Butt, familiar with Stowe's rowing career at Kent School before Cornell, made sure he got his try-out with the 1964 Olympic team. And that Stowe stroked the gold medal Tokyo eight with the Amlong brothers rowing at 2 and 4.

The one time I met Bill Stowe, in Fenwick, Old Saybrook, Connecticut I don't think he liked me either. Because we just beat Cornell with him not stroking them. Cornell removed him from that boat for stealing a Christmas Creche. Brown removed Peter Amram from our boat for driving a car into a university quadrangle. All crews have their behavioral problems.

Well, for Dad Vail 1959 we had a fast crew (Whitey's stop-watch insisted!) but no way to transport our fast shell, the Stein.

We went snooping all around the campus and city of Providence just looking for some kind of an idea-- anything. Behind Brown's Marvel Gym we found a tattered contraption that may have been, according to university archivist Peter Mackie, a blocking sled once used by Brown football teams.

This thing, whatever it was, included two toy wheels and a heavy wood beam. Well, if everybody worked together couldn't we lift the beam up on top of Bill's old Ford station wagon? We did that, but now the wheels, that were supposed to trail behind, shuddered and shook when Bill drove a few feet.

So three oarsmen fetched a boulder from the Seekonk riverbank and placed it directly above the two wheels for possible ballast.

This MIGHT work. But now the station wagon's roof under the long beam which was under the Stein began to sag and cracks even began to appear.

Mouse, the designated driver, nevertheless set out for Philadelphia as four oarsmen inside the vehicle held its roof up with the balls of their feet.

Where did the money come from for our hotel? And where did the money come from to pay for the training barge Bill had Peter Sparhawk at Princeton build and deliver so that we could teach complete novices better in the future?

How lucky we were to be rowing in a city that still had a great newspaper. From the first day we set foot on the porcupine dock the Providence Journal showed real interest with features about us that even exceeded the sport page.

The Providence Journal was driving the Brown administration nuts. Do you think we didn't know that? Bill and Whitey and Cushing and Covert and the rest of us just plunged ahead, especially Bill, who figured he'd find some way to pay for things later.

The hotel was really nice. I'd never stayed in a hotel for a sports event before. We took a long Friday afternoon nap then headed for the Schuylkill and had a brisk row. Crews and oars by scores-- everywhere.

But it wasn't until the first heats early in the morning that we saw something that made our skin crawl. A crew all in black and rowing with perfect precision. We looked again, gaping this time. They were huge-- as big as BU or Dartmouth or Yale. And won their heat by two lengths, we soon were told, Menlo Park. A junior college? How could that be? Junior colleges don't have crew. And they had come all the way from California.

This was not the worst of it. As we devoured the Philadelphia newspapers we read that Menlo Park was the "dark horse" of the regatta for sure and was coached by Dewey Hecht, pairs gold medallist at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.