Boat Plans Bolger | Elfsteden 11 Towns Rowing Marathon Give us a HUG!

Boat Plans Bolger

Which would you rather do on the last weekend before Christmas? Go shopping, or go rowing with a bunch of people you hardly know, in a foreign country, over the longest night of the year?

Obviously, it was a no-brainer, and so it was that I spent a freezing weekend having a tremendous time, rowing past the occasional windmill.

And as so often, but still unexpectedly happens with events like this, it was a cultural eye-opener too.

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Event: Elfsteden "Serious Request" Rowing Marathon
Where: Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
Distance: 185km, 4-crew relay
Time: 15 hrs ish
Boat type: Touring coxed quads and doubles
Number of crews in the event: 12, I think
Event Organiser: ElfstedenRoeimarathon

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The Elf WHAT?
"Elfstedentocht" means 11 towns tour. The 11 towns in question are all in North-West Holland, in a region known as West Frisia, which has a lot of canals. Which, like much of the Netherlands, very flat and right next to the North Sea.So any strong winds that might be happening in the North Sea because its, say, the middle of winter, can come whistling across the area. Im sure you see where Im going with this.

So its a rowing event, right?
Yes, and no. Originally, it was a speed skating event. A Dutch competitor in the version we rowed explained that it started with the local farmers (a widespread occupation in the area) skating (because everyone could) from town to town along the many canals, to check out whether the girls in the next town were prettier than the ones in your own town, not being able to make up their minds, moving on to the next town, and so on, till they finished up back home, where they decided there wasnt so much wrong with the local lasses after all. This is probably fiction, but its a nice thought.

What with modern weather an all that, the skating event hardly ever happens any more because its very rare that the ice ever gets thick enough. But apparently when it even looks like it might take place, the whole of Holland grinds to a halt with the excitement.

Waiting for the start.

However, since this is a rare event, at some point someone realised that it was also a great course for a rowing event, which takes place on the Friday and Saturday after Ascension Day in May every year (and one of the many cultural things we learned on this trip was that, despite their reputation for being, er, liberal about some things, your average Dutch person knows exactly when Ascension Day is and finds it quite reasonable to organise events in relation to it, whilst obviously the average Brit wouldnt even have heard of it).

The race involves up to about 100 crews, all in touring coxed doubles, which are highly popular in the Netherlands - again, theyre practically unheard of here. The format is that each team comprises up to four "crews", and they swap in and out at regular intervals round the route. We did a slightly shortened version of the usual 210km course – because it was too windy to row across a lake called the Slotermeer – and coxed quads were allowed as a slightly less challenging alternative to the coxed doubles..

Why were we doing it in the bleak midwinter?
I hope my Dutch rowing buddies will forgive me if Ive got any of this wrong – sometimes the language barrier was a bit impenetrable: the normal Elfstedentoch starts and finishes in a town called Leeuwarden (pronounced Loo-wah-den). OK, park that thought.

Each year, the weekend before Christmas, the Dutch equivalent of Radio 1, does a big charity event which includes DJs being shut up in glass rooms and stared at for 48 hours, amongst other activities. This spectacle is based in a different town every year, and this year the honour fell to Leeuwarden.

So, somewhere along the line, some bright spark said "Since were all doing this in Leeuwarden, why dont we get those crazy rowers to do a special charity edition of that rowing event they always do here n the summer, when its warm, and the nights arent very long?"

The lights on the rowing boat were extremely cunning:
sterotypically, designed by the German. They were
UNDER the tape that went over the riggers, so we
didnt lose our night-sights, but could be
 seen by the land team.

Now, the Dutch are pretty keen on long-distance rowing – to the extent that they actually have a league for which individuals have rowed the most miles in long-distance races each year. Which is why there were two Dutch crews of five doing  the Tour du Léman à lAviron round Lake Geneva earlier in the year, where our crew were the sole British representatives. And because of the Dutch crews excellent English, wed got chatting, and swapped some email addresses, and so when even they couldnt quite find enough local clubmates who thought that rowing through sleet in the dark was a good idea, they got in touch, and thus it was that Team HUG for Life (Holland, UK and Germany - there was a random German too) was formed.

And despite the fact that there 17 of the rowers and all 6 or so of the land team were Dutch, they did the whole thing in English just to accommodate the two of us (me and my husband) and Stefan the German. I mean, can you imagine a bunch of Brits swapping to another language for a complicated, everyones-tired event? Even in the best-case scenario, wed all still be standing at the start asking whether someone had seen any pens, gardeners or aunts.

Attention, Go!

Dramatic steering at the start to avoid another crew
that suddenly set of ahead of us.

No. The start format was truly unique and set the tone for the wackiness of the whole thing. All of the boats were lined up along the river bank in Leeuwarden. However, the start point was in the town square (where the incarcerated DJs were) about 150m away. 

At the "go", a card was handed to the Land Team Manager, who then had to sprint to the river to hand the card to the cox, and then the crew could depart. This was a useful way of separating out the crews so that there wasnt a total pile-up at the first bridge. 

The card – "stempelkaart" in Dutch – had to be stamped at various points along the route in the manner of an orienteering event. Despite spending most of the time in a plastic canister, it had practically disintegrated by the end.

Why does Holland have so many windmills?
We rowed the first section, which soon took us out of town and through some fields. In the rain.

There were some little windmills that looked like they were sort of Wendy-windmills, although they also appeared to be functioning. And at this point (whilst still rowing along), I had a lightbulb moment. Now, this may be obvious to you, but pause for a second to ask yourself "Why does Holland have so many windmills?". The answer "Because its very windy", merely explains why having many windmills is a sensible idea there. But what are they FOR? 

In Britain,  windmills were traditionally used for grinding wheat. And so no one would build a Wendy-windmill, unless it was some kind of Petit Trianon-style indulgence for rural rich kids.

Which these werent – Dutch windmills arent used for milling flour, theyre used for pumping water. In which case, a small one can be appropriate. 

All change!
After about an hour, we reached our first changeover point, where the next crew from our team, and our land supporters (wearing high-viz vests that, in a nice touch, sported the same HUG for life we had on our rowing tops, although these were almost all buried under layers of fleeces and waterproofs).

Equipped with boat hooks, they hauled us quickly to the bank, hands reached out to pull us out of the boat, and we then helped our replacements in. Feet were not to be adjusted.

Then we piled into the two minibuses and camper van that were our support fleet, and headed off to the next swap point. Once we were there, it was time to strip everything off and put on dry kit (I had packed 5 complete sets of kit in separate bags within my kit bag, which proved a useful, and widely-used approach). It was SOOO cold, that it was essential to remove any damp item. And all items were damp (though I kept the same pair of waterproof socks on the whole way).

The camper van was a brilliant changing room, and the engines were kept running on all 3 vehicles the whole time, so that the heaters could stay on. Although we were within sight of civilisation the whole way, for the rowers, it was an exercise in good personal management or you could very easily have got hypothermic.

Dutch bridges arent like British ones
In the UK, and in much of the rest of Europe, most waterways are navigable. In the Netherlands, there are so many canals, required to drain water out of the "polder" land that has been reclaimed fro the sea, that lots of them are just there, and theyre not designed to take boats. Theyre narrow, and the road or foot bridges over them are mostly flat - theyre cheaper to build that way, and easier to walk or drive over. 

To take a rowing boat through the lowest and narrowest bridges (which was probably 90% of them), we had to lie back and put our blades parallel with the boat. We rapidly learned that this was called "liggen and slippen", which doesnt translate well (because we just dont "slippen" in the UK) so the Dutch phrase was used.

With the water levels in the canals particularly high because of recent (and present) rain, the bridges were even lower than usual – at the most northerly point, in a town called Dokkum, which had three massive windmills, the bridges carry four lanes of traffic, so once wed done liggen and slippen, the boat was almost coming to a halt before wed got out the other side. Fortunately, the bridges were also so low, that we could easily reach up and pull ourselves along on its girders.

At one point wed slightly misjudged the steering through a particularly narrow bridge, and one of my blades had got broken. After a hasty phone call to our land team, it was decided they couldnt quickly get a spare to us, and as we were quickly going to freeze if we didnt keep moving, we put the blade inside the boat, and set off. It was an interesting exercise in core stability to scull 10km with one blade!

A real team effort
After the race finished back in Leeuwarden, our crew rowed the boat back to Wetterwille Rowing Club where the trailers were parked, and where traditional Dutch pea and ham soup was being served. It was around 3.30am at this point.

The end.

The club bar was lovely, warm, and a live race tracker was being projected on the wall. Pity the poor crews in doubles still out on the course! I think we were 4th in the end (a 2nd broken blade allowed wed been holding off to get past us), and the race was won by members of the Dutch national squad, in a coxed double. They admitted it was harder than their usual training! Although they also rated a lot higher than the rest of us.

Strangely, this wasnt a major rowing endurance challenge – after all, we only rowed 4 x 10k pieces over a 15 hour period (and coxed 1). Frankly, the greatest achievement was managing the logistics of the whole thing, and the heroes of the trip were the land team, who flawlessly found each changeover point, some of which were seriously in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch dark, at the right time, and even managed to find cafes where they bought bags of chips from time to time.

And thats why it would be extremely difficult to do this event as a brand new entry form another country: you really do need local knowledge, so your best bet is to chat up any long-distance Dutch rowers you come across.

Some cultural things we learned
For a European country thats only on the other side of the North Sea from the UK, we were struck by some quite deep-seated cultural differences, as well as some fun and superficial ones:

1. Around town, people only ride "sit up and beg" bikes. 
2. They dont wear cycle helmets.
3. Handlebars are often decorated with plastic flowers.
4. One team member explained that we parked before the race in a car park that was a bit of a walk form the town center because it was free "and were Dutch people so we dont like to pay". Id heard this from a friend beforehand, but it was interesting to get it from the horses mouth!
5. Even people with well-paid jobs often dont own a car.
6. It is quite normal to mention bodily functions using language that would make even open-minded Brits raise their eyebrows.
7. Most rowing clubs have a mangle in the boathouse to wring out the boat-wiping towels.

A final note on the charity fund-raising
The event raised money for the Dutch Red Cross for a special campaign to do with stopping children dying of diarrhea in third world countries. I wont mention the campaigns slogan – see cultural point 6, above. However, apparently well over 50,000 Euros were raised – I THINK just from the rowing bit (all crews combined), which is amazing. It seems Dutch people are very happy to pay after all when its for a good cause.

The video below was made by the Dutch squad team. Near the beginning theres a great bit of the land team managers all sprinting to the boats with the stempelkaarts. Around 2.40, one of the rowers appears to throw his water bottle ashore with some vehemence: this contained their stempelkaart, which is why the land team chap runs after it, (gets it stamped), and throws it back.

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Boat Designs And Plans | Tour du Leman 2014 How we went Dutch and won!

Boat Designs And Plans

The start: I just love a good melée.
© Maxcomm Communication

One of the questions I find Im most often asked after completing a major expedition row is "Would you do it again?" Which, on closer analysis, is faintly irritating. I mean: if the answers "No", does that mean my achievement this time is somehow reduced? However, in the case of this 160km race round Lake Geneva, the answer keeps being "Yes", and so it was that in early July I turned my attention for the sixth time to the challenge of finding suitable crewmates.

My friend Hannah and I keep doing this race. This year would be her seventh attempt, and my sixth (our fifth together). And every year we agree that the hardest part is finding three other nutters to join us. Some friends sign up with enthusiasm, but once theyve done it, feel that justice has been done, and theres no need to come back again. (I thought that after the first time, but changed my mind a few months later.) A few have come for a second time, so that they could do it "better", having learned from the experience first time around. One ventured that she would rather chew her own foot off than have to do it again.

So by this year, not only we were back to square one, but we were rapidly running out of options, having already used up the most likely candidates from our rowing friend network. However, a flash of inspiration sparked by a posting on Facebook secured one friend whom I had not previously pestered (in hindsight, I cant imagine why not), who was apparently on holiday at the time I asked, and didnt tell her husband about my message until the next day when shed decided the answer had to be "Yes" anyway!

But beyond that,  we were stuck.

Every year we are met by the lovely
Gerald at the airport, bearing a paddle,
just in case we cant identify him.

However, one of the many things that makes this race so unique (in addition to the length, the accommodation in a nuclear bunker, the completely fantastic team who put the event on, and the three-course lunch afterwards) is that the various crews get to know each other (not just because of close-packed bunker living), especially as many of the same individuals return year after year. And so it was that two Dutch ladies eagerly agreed to join us and – hooray, we had a crew! Both regularly row long distances, in fact theyd done a 210km race just a few months earlier in a coxed double. All in all, four of us had already done the Tour du Léman 12 times between us. But would that actually help?

Serious competition

From the beginning, the pressure was on more than ever before, with a record five entries from  womens crews. The most wed ever seen before was three, and last year we were the only ones.

So, how could we get a competitive advantage? One definite benefit of knowing the race well is that we have a well-established list of stuff to take, and boy there is a lot of it! However, our detailed notes on exactly how much we ate in recent years (for several years wed taken FAR too much), the rig of the boat, and our knowledge of most of the waypoints, were invaluable.

The requirements of long-distance rowing are not easily
compatible with budget airline luggage allowances.

The Dutch brought some new ideas to the mix, including some excellent pulleys for keeping the steering lines in place (particularly handy in the dark), although we amused to find ideological differences with them about our usual practice of refilling our waterbottles from the lake and adding purifying tablets, which reduces the amount of water we have to cart around (their wholesome natures were horrified). Still, even us doing it saved a good 5kg of freight weight, and its also important that everyone is happy.

Going off hard

Our – well, lets be honest – Hannahs usual approach to beating the female competition is to sprint out of the start. There are various aspects to this, and she added a new variation this year. The race goes off with all the crews (23 this year) in a mass start. The first leg is a mere 500m across the lake, followed by a 90 degree turn round a buoy, before we head out along the long Swiss shore. I always cox the first shift, as I actually enjoy the challenge of positioning as tight to the start buoy as possible, and then the ensuing melée when the gun (its an actual shotgun) goes off and, as the smallest member of the crew, this puts our biggest engines into that initial dash, so that we can stay ahead of the main pack, and get a clean turn round the buoy.

We did that again.

Hannah then continues to hammer along for the first hour or two, leaving any female competition behind, and hopefully dispirited. It generally works. Actually, we dont know if they are dispirited, but they are usually left well behind, which is all we care about.

This year, in the face of the added and unknown opposition, she volunteered to miss the first swap which meant that she would have to row continuously for the first 2.5 hours of the race, rather than than the maximum 2 hours that everyone else would. This saved us at least 2 minutes, which doesnt sound much over 160km, but wait and see how much it mattered.

Not the most together rowing, but I love
the reflections of the blades in the water.

Row, row, row, row, cox 

Thats the routine for long-distance rowing. Every 30 minutes, you change the person coxing. As fast as you can. And then set off again as soon as possible. Those who arent involved in the change can stuff in a jelly baby of two, and slurp some liquid, but I was careful not to over-indulge, and call out "Bow ready" just as soon as I could. Everything else you might need to do (lets not go into details, you all know what Im talking about) gets done while youre coxing, as well as eating, filling up waterbottles for the other Brits (top tip: we take a jug so you dont have to get your gloves wet by dipping a bottle in the lake), and taping up any fingers that are becoming tender. I kept my tape tucked  down my sock so it was always convenient. Its little things, but in the best traditions of horseshoe nails, it IS little things that can make a huge difference: I finished the race with only one small blister (Hannah says this is because I dont pull hard enough, though, and Im not arguing with someone who pulls as hard as she does).

Ahead of schedule

Yet another advantage of being here for the umpteenth time was that we had a laminated list of our times to each way point taped near the coxs seat so we could keep track of how we were doing against previous years. And right from the beginning, the news was good. Very good.

The conditions WERE excellent, but so had they been the previous year, and at each marker, we celebrated being further and further ahead.

As we got to the top of the lake, an Italian mens crew and a four-men-and-a-powerful-lady Dutch crew who had been on our heels all day (in the case of the Italians, sometimes getting ahead of us, though they seemed to faff a lot on their changeovers, which mostly let us overtake again), started to fall back and stay there. The Dutch never really threatened to get close to us again, and we mused on the damage that must be being done to the Italians machismo by being beaten by a bunch of girls.

Substantial blisters and a very alarming wrist "bruise"
caused by prolonged feathering rather than any
external blow. This is not my hand, by the way. 

As well as the psychological benefits of being this fast, we had the massive practical benefit of getting  to the tricky-to-navigate corner at Yvoire in semi-daylight. Wed never even been close to that before!

From there, its a three hour run in, and that WAS a tough three hours. Pain in the knee? Stop over-compressing, Helena. Back in agony as usual by this stage? Sit up and engage your abdominals.

With two hours to go, the Italians finally caught us, and slipped ahead. And for most of the final hour, as Hannah drove the rating up to nearer 26 from the 24-25 wed been maintaining up till then (it doesnt sound much more, but trust me, you DO notice), I resorted to the proven tactic of counting strokes up to 100. Again, and again. And again. The new Brit later told me that it was about 700 strokes per half hour session – shed been counting on and off for most for the day!

So many boxes ticked

We finally crossed the line after 14 hours 29 minutes at 35 seconds. Woo hoo! Its a short paddle from the finish line back to the landing stage at the club where a well-managed bunch of junior members cheer you in and then (total joy) lift your boat out for you! But it was only at this point that, in response to our urgent enquiries in our best French (frankly a minor miracle given the state we were in), we were totally sure that we were the fastest womens crew.

The ladies crew that were second definitely
won the "Pimp my Boat" competition.

Though actually, not by much. A German ladies crew finished only 11 minutes behind us, a highly impressive result given this was their first attempt at the race, and I felt faintly sorry for them that they did such a good time and still didnt win. Though not that sorry. And they had all rowed together before and were using their own boat (which they said was nice and light despite being wooden) and everything!

However, wed won, wed beaten our previous best time by 45 minutes, and wed beaten the two Dutch four-men-and-a-powerful-lady crews who are friends of our Dutch girls, and who were most gracious. The bragging rights were definitely ours, even if we didnt over-use them. Oh and the Italians came and kissed us on the cheeks (several times, of course), which I think was in admiration rather than just general Italian opportunism.

So, again?

Im allowed to ask that, OK? Its just others that I think should come up with more imaginative questions. It turned out afterwards that, whilst the race was in progress and it was clear we were doing well, Hannah and I were independently thinking that this was surely as good as it was ever going to get, and that perhaps it would be nice NOT to have to do all that training and organising every summer holidays.

From "Wow, we finished" (2006) through
"We were faster than the mixed crew" (2009), and
"We can do sub 16 hours" (2013) to this years
"Experience helps".  NB We sank after 1 hr 20 mins
in 2008, and did a shortened course in 2012.

But as one German chap said, when he was interviewed by the organisers at the cocktail party before the race this year (yet another way in which this is an event like none other), "Ask me if I enjoyed it two weeks afterwards".

And heres the rub: we were just under 29 minutes outside the record. Which was set in 2004 be a German womens crew which included a woman who had won a medal at the Olympics that year. 29 minutes. Could we?

On the other hand, for the first time this year, I bought the souvenir polo. So maybe Ive "been there, done that, got the t-shirt." and I should fill up my long-distance rowing calendar for 2015 with other events.

Winners of the "Categorie Elite Féminine", Tour du Léman a lAviron 2014.

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