Thursday, October 25, 2007

Race Report: Race V (22) 2007 Head of the Charles, Part I: Pre-Race


I was determined our race day launch would not be a repeat of the dangerous and frightening experience we had Friday attempting to launch the Pocock 8 from the plastic Connect-a-Dock squat T . I scouted for nearby permanent docks and came up with zilch, both up and down river. Carrying the boat would be stressful too. It's heavy! I asked the coxswain in the orange jacket bbeside our nearest nightmare formation if they'd made any structural changes, which they had not. The cox the previous day had offered me one bit of advice about launching. She held up a stick and pointed 6" - 8" down its length. "That's how deep the water is off the dock," she said. I hoped for 8" and an intact rudder. This cox remarked that the previous day's helper was very inexperienced, and proceeded to give me a workable plan for getting the boat safely onto the dock. We followed her directions, spun the boat so the stern faced the water, took the boat up and overhead, and rowers slid so they were bunched between 2 and 3 seat and between 5 and 6 seat. Only then, boat still held high, did the stern group mount the connect a dock blocks that formed the stem of the T, angle up river and walk towards the end of the left side of the t-top, at which point it was workable to get the rowers holding the bow onto the T stem and over to the right side of the T top with nobody having to assume the Atlas-position, as Becky had done Friday. Rowers took the boat (borrowed from Navy, who had named it the St. Joe's, renamed by us "The Doris" in honor of Doris Day and "Que Sera, Sera" which was our fight song,) around and down and pushed it out a little as it landed on water, my hand on the stern by the rudder (a larger turnier rudder attached by and borrowed from John Titus of Pocock the previous day) which did not touch bottom or break off. The rowers got their oars and I attached my borrowed cox box (from the kind folks in the NK booth) and borrowed speed coach (from kind Nicki of Pocock). I called "Oars across," waited as the port oars went out to steady the boat like outriggers, called "one foot in," and then "Down." As they tied in to the mostly giant size 14 shoes on the foot stretchers I crawled into the stern cox seat, attached my headset to the coxbox in its round cradle, turned on the speed coach, we counted up, pushed out into the Charles River and joined the parade of mostly 8's on the down river journey to the starting chute.
No stroke rate registered on the cox box, though the amplification system worked. Two thirds of the way through our warm up, after turning the stroke coach on and off half a dozen times and just as I was about to have us weigh enough so folks could get a final drink and rest a minute the stroke coach gave me a rate of 19. I asked them to take it up two in two and lo the stroke coach registered 21. Nora, our stroke, shed her cowl of worry, dropped her shoulders three inches, and we were ready to do it for Doris.

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