"Oh, like stage crew? What play is it?"
"No, not stage crew. Rowing crew. The crew team. As in, boats and oars and such."
"Oooh. I didn't know we had a rowing team."
This is another conversation I've had many times.
It's an Olympic sport, one that this year's American team won. It was featured in "The Social Network," when the main character was a coxswain. It has its own movie, "Backwards." But no one seems to know what crew is unless they have a friend on a rowing team.
Three days a week, I hop on a bus after school, filled with my teammates of all skill levels and both sexes. (I do say sexes and not genders here, Becca, but in this particular case they are synonymous.) We head down to a local river, take out our 64-foot-long, 2-foot-wide boats, and row. Well, it's not quite that simple - and I'm going to give you all the inside details of a day of rowing, and a regatta.
First, I will need to explain the mechanics of a boat, also called a Shell. It's called this for its hollow, thin, hard qualities that are necessary for rowers to be safe and to still be able to carry the boat between the water and the boathouse.
We'll go from bow to stern in the average boat: a port-rigged Eight. As you can see from the diagram, there are eight rowers and the sternmost rower (aka Eight seat or Stroke seat)'s oar is to port. Hence, port-rigged Eight. With me so far? No? Yes? Good.
Just in case you didn't know, this is important for the rest of this post: bow = front, stern = back, port = left, starboard = right. We say port, starboard, bow, and stern because rowers sit backwards and what is left to coxswains is right to rowers, etc. So when I say "We'll go from bow to stern," it means "we'll go from front to back." Got it? Yes? Good.
The first seat from bow to stern is called Bow seat. This is to avoid confusion that may arise from saying "have One seat take a stroke":
Ok, one seat, but that could mean any seat. Which one? OHH that one seat. Right.
"Bow seat" is much clearer. Bow seat is a starboard rower, meaning his/her oar is out to the starboard side of the boat. He/she will require a starboard oar. Bow seat follows Two seat. When I say "follow," I mean Bow seat watches Two seat's rhythm and matches it as closely as possible, going to each position of the stroke at the same time. The key to rowing is keeping together, "in sync," if you will.
The next seat is Two seat. Two is a port, meaning his/her oar goes to the - you guessed it! - port side of the boat. He/she will require a - altogether now - port oar. Two seat follows Three seat.
Detecting a pattern? Good, because that's exactly how it goes all the way down the boat. Odd numbers (including Bow) are starboard, even numbers are ports. You would think it would make the boat hard to steer, with all of the starboard oars behind the port ones, and indeed it does look off-balance at first glance. But the placement of all the starboard oars behind each one's port partner does absolutely nothing to the steering. This is because the extra power to port in the stern is counterbalanced by the extra power to starboard in the bow. It all works out nicely.
That reminds me, rowers/oars/seats are organized by pair: Bow/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/Stroke. Bow/2 is also called "bow pair," and 7/Stroke is also called "stern pair." If you have Bow-4 rowing, that's "bow four"; 5-Stroke, "stern four." Bow-6 is "bow six," 3-Stroke is "stern six." To have people in the middle rest, the coxswain would call combinations of these: "stern four and bow pair, row" or "bow four and stern pair, row" or simply "five and six, sit out."
Likewise, the other rower in a pair is the first rower's "pair partner." For example, I am five seat, so six is my pair partner. I am six's pair partner.
Back to the tour of the boat! Eight seat is also known as Stroke seat. Rowers sit backwards in the boat, so to the rowers, Stroke is in the front. Stroke seat sets the pace or rhythm - the stroke - for everyone in the boat.
Another useful diagram! These are the stages of the stroke. The catch and the finish, aka the release, are points, while the drive and recovery, aka the slide, are processes. The entire time going from the catch to the finish is the drive, and the entire time going from the finish to the catch is the recovery/slide.
But wait, why and how are that diagram's stick figure's legs extending? Rowing is with your arms, right? Wrong. Rowers' feet are strapped into a shoe stretcher low in the boat. Our seats slide on tracks on a platform a little higher up.
The only things that are relevant here are the seat and the shoes/stretcher. Come back to this later, though, if you need to for other parts of the boat.
In this picture, you can see how the shoes are set low, under the platform where the seat is. Going back to the stroke diagram, you can see how the feet stay still while the seat slides. This allows rowers to take advantage of humans' strongest muscles for the drive - our leg muscles, which work constantly against the force of gravity and are biologically the strongest voluntary muscles in the human body. The main force comes from the legs, then a little bit from the back as we swing into the release, and just less than that from the arms. People seem to think that rowing is all upper body strength - "Oh, you row? You must have really strong arms!" - but really, it's all in the legs. Arms are just there to hold the oar and to feather.
Feathering is the rotation of the oar to minimize wind resistance. At the catch, the oars drop into the water, squared against the surface of the water to get maximum force. They stay that way through the drive, while the oars are in the water. At the release, when the oars come out of the water, rowers rotate the oars to parallel the water as we come up the recovery, or "slide." Going up the slide, rowers gradually square up the blades of the oars, finding the right balance between minimum wind resistance and minimum delay at the catch. Finally, at the catch, the blade is completely square again to restart the cycle. That entire process is called feathering. There's also rowing on the square, which is for warming up and brand-new novices only, because it causes a lot of splashing, wind resistance, and makes it harder to row in general.
One more note: feathering is with the inside hand only. The outside hand lets the oar rotate inside its grip. If the outside hand rotates as much as the inside hand, the outside wrist will get too tired too quickly. It's hard at first to feather with one hand, but it's much easier in the long run.
At last, we've reached the stern! The coxswain sits in the stern, and does not row. Instead, he/she steers the boat and gives directions to the rowers via the coxswain's microphone.
This is what a coxswain looks like. See her microphone? It stays on her head using a sort of elastic headband. The wire connects the microphone to a Cox Box, which you can sort of see near her feet. The Cox Box gives lots of useful information, like the number of strokes per minute (called a stroke rating) and often will have a stopwatch built in. It also sends the coxswain's words from the microphone to speakers all down the boat so that the rowers in the bow can hear him/her without any screaming required. In this picture you can also see the ropes that control the steering. These, like all nautical ropes, are called "sheets." They control the skeg, a little fin under the boat in the stern that steers the entire boat.
In some Fours (four-rower boats, lighter, slower, and more maneuverable, generally reserved for slightly more experienced rowers), especially more modern ones, the coxswain sits in the bow, in a cavity that allows him/her more leg room. These boats, with the coxswain seat in the bow, are called bow-loaded fours, and are only for boats where the coxswain can trust his/her rowers completely. Coxswains in bow-loaders can't see the rowers to critique them, so such boats are generally reserved for rowers who don't need much critique, i.e. varsity rowers. Different coxswains prefer bow- or stern-loaded boats depending on preference, though bow-loaded boats are always less cramped for the coxswain. Eights are always stern-loaded.
There you have it! A tour of a crew boat, the stroke, and some other useful basic knowledge.
Next week, I'll give a run-down of a typical practice, then the following week, I'll do a piece on regattas. This three-part series is in honor of the end of fall season, marked for our team by today's Head of the Occoquan Regatta. The boat I was in came in 9th out of 19. First half is pretty good, considering that most of the teams are clubs that get more funding, more practice, and better equipment than our school club team gets.
To finish off, I'm going to embed a link to a video from this season's first regatta, and I'll tell you that I'm in the boat that passes by at 5:40. I already told you I'm 5 seat; use your new knowledge from this post to see if you can find me.
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