Boat Plans Pdf | Tour du Leman 2008 The one that got away

Boat Plans Pdf

When I first took part in the 160km, non-stop Tour du Léman à lAviron around Lake Geneva, I was thrilled to have completed what I felt at the time was a very daunting challenge, and was quite clear that there was no need ever to do it again. 

But some months later, the other woman from that mixed crew and I decided that we SHOULD do it again. And actually, make it harder this time by doing it in an all-womens crew.

Having pulled together a carefully chosen quintet of ladies who can "shut up and row", we set off for what we thought was going to be a tough row. In fact, it turned out not to be about rowing that year, but about the pumps. Of which  we only had one, and it was rather inadequate.

Ladies who row
At this point I should, perhaps, mention that the formation of the crew wasnt quite as easy as Ive made it sound. Youd be amazed at how many, hard-training/racing rowers DONT think that a 16 hour row round a lake is a good idea. But having got stuck at four out of the necessary five, I got chatting to a woman at the City of Sheffield Rowing Club training camp, which I was attending, mostly for social reasons, at the invitation of friends from there. After talking to her for about 5 minutes by the landing stages, I somehow felt that she was a likely candidate. "Hey, I dont suppose youd like to row round 160km round Lake Geneva at the end of September, would you?", I asked, before we were hurried into our single sculls by the coach, and sent off for the session. 

As I pulled back into the landing stage an hour or so later, she hopped out of her boat, and came over. "Put me down for that race. Ive already booked that week off work and was looking for something to do." Shes been my best expedition rowing friend ever since.

For Yorkshire, chocolate and the flag

The flag.

All five of us had strong Yorkshire connections: four were past or present members of York City RC, and the fifth was born elsewhere in Gods own county. And whilst I never got used to drinking tea THAT strong, its the kind of place you feel an attachment to, even if you only lived there are a temporary migrant from the South.

For further bonding of our otherwise dispersed team, I made a crew flag that featured the colours of the four rowing clubs that the five of us belonged to at the time. It was to become our rallying cry.

Getting roughed up
Although the weather was idyllic the day before as we were preparing the boat, the forecast was for a windy race day, and as soon as we rowed out of the organising clubs harbour, we knew we were in trouble. Still, 22 crews set off on the usual 1km charge across the lake, before turning to head out past the UN building and along the Swiss shore.

It was tough going. Although wed taped up our riggers, waves kept breaking over the bows, rapidly drenching the woman rowing there, and actually they were breaking high enough that they often just landed straight in the boat. I was soon working our hand pump whilst also trying to steer (which needed to be done actively as the waves were pushing us around).

Our normal stopping schedule would have had the first swap after 30 mins, but we were aware that this was no time to stop and clamber up and down the boat, so the first combo kept going, although with increasingly frequent pauses to bail out. At some point the hose fell off the end of the pump, but the amount of water the pump was shooting out, meant it was easy to aim over the side. That wasnt the problem. The capacity of the pump was, though: and it wasnt enough.

We discovered later that all of us were independently thinking, "If we get through this rough bit, even if the water flattens out, were all so wet were going to get hypothermia", and as five basically lightweights, we were all right. However, it was still a big "if"...

Bling
At this point, Ill leave us pumping and paddling ineffectually and explain a small aside.

Keen to encourage the participation of more all-women crews, the organisers had managed to secure sponsorship from a local jeweler (this being Switzerland, after all) in the form of five Boucheron watches. Nice. These would go to the winning womens crew.

So, as we were struggling along, quite close to the only other womens crew in the event, one of our crew did raise the point that if neither crew was going to finish, the watches would go to the one that got furthest, and so we should make sure we always paused ahead of them.

Which was a fine plan, but like so many brilliant strategies, its the implementation where things often go wrong. And the last time we stopped to bail, when we just HAD to, we were behind the others. At this point, the straw that broke the camels back, or more accurately, the wave that swamped the yolette, came over the side, and it was all over. As pre-planned, we pulled our feet out, the boat rolled over (but stayed floating), and we all ensured we stayed holding on to the boat with one hand until the other hand was holding the ladder of one of the two motor cruisers that were in attendance.

The race organisers always assign one cruiser per crew to act as a safety boat. However, as 11 crews had already swamped or run for he safety of the bank, one who no longer had a crew had chosen, for some reason, to follow the girls in the wet t-shirts. 

This was helpful, though it did lead to some angst as two of us got onto one cruiser, and three onto the other, and I was only 99% certain Id seen all three of the others get onto the other boat.

The French can be sticklers for accuracy
As we climbed aboard, I saw my drybag, containing clothes, and someones iPod, blow away across the surface of the lake, floating, because it contained quite a lot of air. "Mes vêtements sèches", I cried, in my best schoolgirl French. The cruiser driver replied "Non, vos vêtements secs", before retrieving the bag with a boat hook. Honestly, what a time for a grammar lesson!

Having been surprised at how warm the lake felt when we were swimming in it, as soon as we got into the cruisers cabin, we started shivvering like mad – it must have been the adrenaline that kept us going while it had to. We divvied up what dry clothes we had, and supplemented these with some towels lent by the two vast French gents driving the boat.

So, after a mere 1 hr and 20 minutes of "rowing", and a surprisingly long run in a cruiser back across the lake, we found ourselves once again at the Société Nautique de Genève, about 14 hours earlier than wed intended. We werent even tired!

We went back to the dormitory, we showed, we got dressed, and it was till only about 11.30am. So we wandered sadly into town, stopping for some photos by the famous Jet dEau, but not feeling very jolly. At this point, a thought suddenly struck me, "The flag!", I wailed. We had no idea what would be rescued from the capsized boat, although we had tied all of the important stuff on.

We wandered on, unexpected tourists. And apparently not very good ones either, as we finished up in a run-down red light district. A little later we did get to a rather better park, and played a few moves on a giant chess board, but we werent really in the mood, and soon headed back to the Club where we were delighted to find that our camera, GPS and most importantly the flag, had been rescued from their little swim. Good for you Pentax and Garmin, is all Ill say: when you say watertight to a depth of 50m, you mean it!

Giant chess is no substitute for a good rowing challenge.

In the end, only five of the 22 starters got round. They were all German. And were equipped with very efficient pumps.

And yes, the other womens crew got the Boucheron watches. Because they were about 25m ahead of us, and went down about 3 minutes later.

So we were a crew with unfinished business. But would we all be able to come back again? In one case, this trip was a crew members holiday budget for the year, so to allocate all that two years running was a big ask... Find out whether we made it!

[Apologies for the lack of pictures in this report: as you now know, we were a bit busy to stop and take any.]


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Boat Blind Plans | Tour du Leman 2012 The year with the nutter in the single

Boat Blind Plans

The 40th edition of the 160km Tour du Léman à lAviron was memorable for two reasons. First, although it is usually a race for touring coxed quads (which allows each competitor to alternate rowing and coxing), a German gent was given special permission to complete it in a touring single to celebrate his 25th participation in the event.

Second, the weather was dire. Really dire. So dire that I spent quite a lot of the race convinced I was going to get hypothemia until I did what I should have done hours earlier, and was happy as Larry after that. Although Larry wasnt taking part.

The calm before the storm
The day before the race was idyllic: the lake was calm, skies were blue, and the biggest danger was getting sunburnt.

But the events pet forecaster was gloomy and predicted that "la Bise" (the French like to give their winds names, although doing so doesnt seem to encourage the meteorological phenomena to be more friendly than if they were just referred to as "a nasty cold, north-easterly") would arrive early afternoon and tear down the lake. As a result, the race start was brought forward an hour (which was a good idea full stop and we hope that it will always go off at 8am in future – otherwise were just wasting good daylight rowing time), and we were told that instead of going right round the outside of the lake as usual, wed go out the northern, Swiss shore, and turn either at Lausanne or Montreux, depending on how the meteo developed, and come back the same way. None of us had ever started a race whose length wasnt known in advance, but we saw the point.

Three of the 79 women who, at that time, had rowed
an ocean: all taking part in the 40th Tour du Léman

The traditional cocktail party the night before the race was a little less lavish than usual, as the event was no longer being sponsored by a Swiss bank, but it was still a great opportunity to get to know competitors from other countries, and the organisers made a point of calling me, one of my crew mates, and a French woman up to the front, as three competitors who were ocean rowers. 

I explained that rowing the Tour du Léman was the start of my fascination with increasingly long-distance rowing, and the organisers should feel very responsible!

Pitter patter
It was still dark when everyone started boating on race day, but by 8am the day had dawned grey and gloomy. As we gathered on the start line, it started to rain. Oh good.

Rain at the start.

The bad weather made for poor visibility of other crews, and this was a particular problem for us as our GPS, which was not in its first youth, had shown itself to be temperamental the day before, and fairly soon stopped working. Lac Leman is a big place, and you certainly cant see the next way point from, so being able to follow others would have been useful.

However, with the rain continuing to fall persistently (at least it was pretty calm at this point), I rapidly found out that my rowing waterproof wasnt, and I was soon getting colder and colder. Usually, after the first few hours, coxing was a welcome rest, but this time I dreaded it because even with a foil blanket over your knees, and the thick coxing coat on, your temperature just plummeted over your half hour stint.

About turn!
As we neared Lausanne, we realised that none of the leading crews had yet passed us coming back the other way, and so the organisers must have elected to take us on to Montreux, which was a good two hours further on. Feeling increasingly chilled to the bone, and having a constant debate with myself about what the correct balance was between "shut up and row" and not causing a medical emergency by not speaking up soon enough, the prospect of a further four hours rowing was not an attractive one.

Not long after, though, we saw the first boat pass us coming back, and by the time the second was passed, we had our wits about us enough to ask where they had turned. The answer was Rivaz, a point about half way between Lausanne and Montreux: good news! And it actually stopped raining.

As we got there, and enjoyed an impressively cheery wave from the group of timekeepers, some breaths of a bitterly cold wind blew in from the north east - the direction of La Bise! If this was going to be the temperature on the way back, drastic action was needed. So I apologised to the crew that I would have to get my dry bag out of my deck hatch (a somewhat time consuming operation) so I could get my fleece out. Putting this on under my useless waterproof was a turning point – at the turning point.

Soon I was back to a normal temperature, even though I was still wet, and whilst the whole experience was far from idyllic, I actually started quite enjoying it.

La Bise failed to materialise in its full menacing form, and our progress was aided by a screaming tailwind that was at least a normal temperature.

The water was pretty rough, because of the wind, so we were forced to feather our blades. We were all individually (though no one mentioned it at the time, of course), concerned that this could give us blisters, especially as our rowing gloves were all soaking wet, but to our surprise, our paws were fine. We speculated later that the fact that our hands were still fairly cold may have helped ward off the blisters.

Craning our necks
Darkness fell, and everything was wet, but after my Atlantic experience at the beginning of the year, I was reveling in the fact that at least it was good fresh water (Evian is one of the towns on the shore of Lac Léman, after all) rather than revolting, lethal-to-drink sea water. And also that after only a few more hours of battling these conditions I would be back in a nice warm building, having a shower and eating a hot meal. It really was a new perspective on this event for me.

It might not have been much fun, but we did make it.

We had a somewhat hairy moment about two hours before the end when the crewmate who was coxing called out "Helena, is there something moored in the water ahead of us?", and as I was at bow, I turned round to see a giant floating crane looming in the blackness only about 20m ahead. Youd think that the sensible Swiss would require things like this to be lit, but then maybe the people in charge of health and safety dont expect rowers to be out after dark. 

Somewhere around here, we noticed that a mens crew from St Petersburg who had been behind us, pulled into a bay, and stopped moving. We found out later that they had retired from the race at this point, and so it was with little fanfare that we finally crossed the line, although we were greatly relieved to get back safely.

Oh, and just for the record, we beat the nutter in the single by 3 minutes. He is the definition of tough!

What happened to YOU?!
The next day, we found out how lucky wed been. Ive mentioned before that many of the same people come to this event year after year, and that it was most enjoyable getting to know long-distance rowers from other countries. One of our particular "Geneva buddies" was a German from Hamburg, who had a strong crew that was well ahead of us. 

But when we returned to the club the next morning in daylight to clear up, we were horrified to see his boat with mangled riggers on one side, and considerable damage to the sachsboard of the boat too. It turned out that when they were just finishing the race, the wind coming down the lake was much stronger than it was by the time we got there. The final 1000m of the race involved turning across the lake to get back to the club. Being sensible Germans, they stopped and bailed every drop of water out of their boat before turning broadside to the waves, and also deliberately rowed with the boat down on bowside as the waves were coming from strokeside. However, a particularly huge wave swamped them, and they had to be rescued into their safety boat (the one allocated to them was more helpful than ours, fortunately).

Having recovered the people, the cruiser then managed to crash sideways into the swamped rowing boat in attempting to get it back, and that was when the damage occurred. Very nasty. And expensive. And not our buddys fault.

I realise that this tale isnt really selling the event when read in isolation (youll find accounts of other years at the Tour du Léman in the Categories menu on the right). And admittedly, one of my crewmates hasnt rowed since. Another declined an invitation to return in 2013, explaining that she "didnt feel the lake love", but three of us did, and had a splendid time. More about that soon! 

"Winners are grinners": we won the Womens Category.

Oh, I nearly forgot: Sealskinz Waterproof Socks. Brilliant.

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Boat Plans African Queen | Gig rowing for river rowers skiffers

Boat Plans African Queen

Today I was lucky enough to be taken out for a "taster session" in a Cornish Pilot Gig (in Hampshire, but you can eat Cornish Pasties there, so why not?).

On hearing that I was a river rower/skiffer, the coach immediately told me that "This is completely different", and it turned out that he was right, in several ways. Heres what I learned...

A bit of history first
When a big ship approaches a harbour, however skilled her captain is, a pilot will usually be taken on board to guide her in, because of the need for detailed local knowledge – shoals, rocks, whether the neighbourhood pirates were still sleeping it off after last nights orgy, rip tides and so on.

Nowadays, this is all very organised with pilots formally associated with each port, and the putting aboard of on on incoming ships arranged by radio. But back in the days when big ships had sails, and small boats were powered by oars, it was a free market, and the first pilot that reach the ship got the job. Which is why pilots paid good money to be taken out by the fastest gig. So early gig races were serious, professional affairs, and probably meant the difference between the rowers family getting fed that evening or not.

A bit of geography second
For the benefit of non-UK readers, or exceptionally geographically challenged Brits, Cornwall is the long bit that sticks out on the bottom left of the UK. Its the first bit of England you come to after youve crossed the Atlantic or come up from the Bay of Biscay, so a lot of big ships used to come in there, which is why they have a big pilot gig racing tradition.

Langstone Cutters Gig Club, with whom I rowed, are considerably further east along the South Coast of England, in Hampshire, but Cornish Pilot Gig racing is a popular and growing sport, and its nice that the gig love is being spread.

Whats different?
These are the personal observations of a fine boat river rower/Thames skiffer, and do not pretend to constitute expert opinion on the sport of gig rowing, but they should be helpful starting points for others like me who ever venture out in a gig.

1. Theyre heavy.
2. Its fixed seat, and there six rowers rowing sweep oar, sitting offset away from the blade. In the boat I was in, stroke rowed with her  blade going out out their left, which I think is standard. This leads to the next point.
3. Strokeside is bowside, and vice versa.

4. 

   The thole pin on the left is sacrificial.

   They use thole pins, but not as skiffers know them. Theyre just round dowels, tapering towards the bottom. Fascinatingly, the bow-most one is made out of some kind of hard wood, but the stern-most one is soft wood and is deliberately "sacrificial", so that it breaks if the rower catches a particularly bad crab. Apparently the record for broken tholes by a  single oarsman in an outing is four.
5. Theyre heavy. 
6. There are no buttons.
7. Your outside hand holds the blade in an UNDER-hand grip (still with thumb over the end). Having your hands holding the handle in opposite directions makes the blade stay square and with the right amount of inboard (which it otherwise wont do because of the lack of button).
8. Your feet just rest against a wooden bar that has four widely-spaced adjustments: there are no footstraps.
9. If you catch a crab, you lift the handle up so the blade comes out from between the thole pins.
10. Theyre heavy.

11. 

    Monogrammed cushion comfort, in club colours,
    including for the cox, I was delighted to see!

    The upholstery is extremely sophisticated. I experienced serious cushion envy.
12. Gloves are de rigeur (rather than being accessories of shame whose wearing has to be hotly justified, as in other rowing circles).
13. "Toss oars" means "put your blade vertical", as all of us who have rowed in the Queens Rowbarge Gloriana know.
14. Really, theyre very heavy.

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Pontoon Boat Plans Aluminum | Have you got the long distance rowing bug

Pontoon Boat Plans Aluminum

Take this quick 10-question test to find out whether youre a normal rower who merely likes reading about expedition rowing, a potential addict, or a full-on raving long-distance rowing loony.

Be warned, though, once you know the signs, youll find yourself starting to exhibit them. And once youve got the bug, theres no known cure, you simply have to indulge...


Question 1. You hear about a 35km rowing event. Your immediate reaction is:
1. Golly, thats a long way
2. Great - where do I sign up?
3. Nah, too short.

People will do the oddest things for the camera.

Question 2. How many seat pads do you own?
1. 0
2. 1
3. 2 or more.

Question 3. Bank holidays provide a great opportunity to:
1. Have a lie-in.
2. Go for a quick scull and then visit your parents/take your kids to the zoo.
3. Do a 2-day rowing expedition and still have time to mow the lawn, clean the bathroom, get some groceries in, and iron some shirts for work next week.

Question 4. How many of these items do you own: a GPS, rowing gloves, 12-hour Neurofen, a dry bag, a waterproof that you can scull in?
1. 0
2. 1-2
3. 3 or more.

Again?

Question 5. On completing the 160km "Tour du Léman" you would think:
1. Thank goodness Ive finished. I never need to do that again.
2. Loved it. Looking forwards to next year already!
3. Loved it. Now, time to talk  to some of the other competitors and find out about long-distance rowing events in their countries.

Question 6. What is your reaction to the following statement: "A bad day on the waters better than a good day in the office"?
1. False.
2. This is only true if you have a really awful job.
3. Yes, yes, yes!

Question 7. How many days of your annual leave have you spent in the past year on expedition rowing (including travelling to/from events)?
1. 0
2. 1-4
3. 5+

Question 8. What is your approach to signing up for long-distance rows?
1. Not if you paid me.
2. I might if someone asks me to join their crew.
3. I keep a "bucket list" of long-distance rowing events I want to do, and plan which ones Im going to take part in at least a year ahead, and then fit other holidays round those.

Whats not to like?

Question 9. How many km training on the water/ergo have you done on average each week this year?
1. 40km or less
2. More than 40km but I dont know how much.
3. More than 40km and I can tell you the exact number, to one decimal place.

Question 10. What is the largest number of expedition rows youve taken part in in one calendar year?

1. 0

2. 1-2

3. 3 or more* 

What your answers mean
If you scored mostly 1s, youre a perfectly normal rower/member of society, but theres a whole world of fun out there youre missing out on!

If you scored mostly 2s, you probably think youre happy with your rowing/life balance (work being relegated to third place, obviously), but youve already tasted the thrill of long-distance rowing, and youre likely to get sucked in further.

If you scored 3s for everything apart from question 9, youre an obsessive long-distance rower and I look forward to meeting you at an event soon (if I havent already). 

If you scored 3s for everything including question 9, you are a serious long-distance rower and youre probably also German.

Go on, fess up – what did you score?

* You may, up to this point, be thinking youre quite the expedition rower. However, set your obsession against that of one member of the Dutch long-distance rowing community, who completed 25 rows of more than 50km in 2013! Yes, 25, as in one every other weekend more or less. Not surprisingly, he doesnt have a garden.

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