Got a home race coming up and want a relatively cheap way to hack up an aligner's sight? Greg Rossolimo at the Pomfret School sent us a great idea for using PVC pipe to build a lightweight but accurate way to align the bows the next time you host a race on your course.

Coach Rossolimo hacked up a frame out of PVC piping and elbows to create a portable, 3-D sight he has used to align up to 6 boats at a time. The PVC sight can be held on a dowel or broomstick if you need to move the sight to align, say, fours and eights, or have a floating start situation. It can also be pretty easily mounted on a post in the ground as well if all the boats are the same length (or you have some of those fancy adjustable stakeboats or pontoons).

The sight itself is made more accurate by having a loop of elastic set a few inches closer to your eye than the center line that you actually line up with your aligning poles on the far shore. The loop is to help narrow your view and gives you a way to get the boats close to alignment--within a few feet of each other--before you make the final corrections to have a fully fair start.

As you can see, Coach takes his alignment seriously and even included a way to take any errant wind gusts into account by including a "tell-tale" consisting simply of a strip of cassette tape attached to the side of his rig. He has since upgraded to an anemometer to measure the wind, but this, too, conveniently attaches right to the PVC to keep everything in close view as the aligner goes to work.

High-tech adds aside, this is a great way to quickly put together a really useful device: instead of investing in a sight or scope, you are just a few bits of PVC and some glue away from having an accurate and easy-to-use way to keep those bows in line.

So, next time it is your turn to host a home race, take some time out from buoy-dropping and stakeboat-setting to hack up this tool; your aligner, and your competition, will thank you when things are smooth--and level--at the start line.

Do you use any neat tricks or tools when you host home races? Share your tips--and hacks--in the comments below.

Have a great rowing hack to suggest for future inclusion here? Send it to us!