Correcting an Error and Feeling Willing to Make More

On this day in 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel. In twenty-one hours and forty-five minutes, he swam from Dover, England, to Calais, France. Nine years later, he drowned in Niagara Falls, trying to swim across and under the churning water.

I realize I do not know how the rate is related to strokes per minute, but will post this finding once I learn as I know closet coxswains are taking notes as they dream of sitting in the stern of a very long narrow boat with eight (or four) tiring rowers eager to hear encouragement, cajoling, counting, anything actually to distract them from the number of minutes left to row as arms, backs, legs talk with greater and greater urgently about the need to cease punishing them and let up, please let up.

I ran us into zero, zilch, zip buoys today. There were boys out in a motor boat, one in the water, sometimes waterskiing, at which time the boat offered us its wake to wobble over, sometimes gawking at us as we passed on either side, two coxed eights intent on our south homebound course. Water was flat, weather warmish, sky clear, Mount Rainier's dome poked out of a cloud bouquet like a cauliflower in its nest of large ruffly leaves. I didn't hear the coach say to head toward the fishing pier, made a wavy motion with my hand to say I didn't hear when I should have put hand to ear so she though I'd heard then talked to me through the megaphone as I headed us dumbly home rather than back north again. All was resolved. Someone in my boat said, "you're her mom, tell her to be quiet!" which made me chuckle but not do any such thing. We learned how to do a river turn - rowers called it a "chop turn" but Julia said if we wanted to sound like we know what's what, we should call it a river turn. In a narrow place, for example a river, you spin the boat by dropping the oar in, lifting it out, tediously and together for a very long time - turning in a port direction you would have ports to back, starboards to row, but rather than backing and moving in a wide circle you pivot tightly and by wee wee increments. I got to conduct with arms out, but we all got bored and exhausted about a third of the way around and returned to ordinary spin so we could head to the dock where there was no wind and I got to steer us toward the north end of the south dock with very little difficulty. Next will be getting into my mind who I want to have tap their oar to move us in the direction I want on short notice so I don't have to say crew-confidence-deflating things like, "I have just gone brain dead. I want to move the bow to port, now what?"