Boden Boat Plans Australia | The Sulkava Rowing Race 15 have fun in Finland

Boden Boat Plans Australia

A 60km rowing race, in a historic style of wooden boat, through beautiful countryside, in the height of summer. On reflection, our hastily-thought-up team name, "Whats Not to Like?", said it all.

And to make it totally irresistible, the boats are coxed 14s (and no, the 1 is NOT a typo – I dont mean coxed 4), with bowside and strokeside sitting  NEXT to each other. I mean, really, whats not to like?!

Although actually, there WAS something that was definitely not to like about some of the boats...

---

Event: The Sulkava Rowing Race
Where: Sulkava, Finland, about 300km NE of Helsinki
Distance: 60km
Time: 5 hours, 9 seconds (oh, how annoyed we were!)
Boat type: Churchboats
Number of crews in the event: 50 in our race; 316 overall
Event Organiser: http://www.suursoudut.fi/en/

---

You know the concept of the hub airport? Which people fly to in smallish planes from small places, then get into a massive Boeing 747 at the hub, fly fast and cheaply over a long distance to another hub? 

Well, churchboats are like Finnish predecessors of the jumbo jets. To get to church each Sunday in rural areas and, lets face it, practically all of Finland is very rural, the residents of isolated farms (not sure that there was another kind) hopped into their dinghies and rowed to wherever the nearest churchboat was based, where they transferred to that, and then rowed fast and efficiently across the big lake to somewhere that was large enough to boast a church. And to make the journey back even quicker, the various chuchboats had a race across the first bit of lake.

There are some wonderful videos from 1938 at the bottom of this blog going into this tradition in more detail if youre interested.

But back to the modern event.

Seating arrangements 
The "bow side and stroke side next to each other" thing sounded fine, till we tried it in practice, when we discovered that the people in the stroke and bow pairs, where the boat is narrowest, couldnt avoid clashing elbows.

However, we did learn about a new piece of rowing "equipment" which none of us had ever used before – a special sleeve, that was on sale, for putting over your blade handle if you wanted to make it fatter to fit the size of your hands better. Our bowside stroke (on the right in this picture) snapped one of these up and found it was great. Our other stroke went for the more budget option of putting a sock over his handle, which was apparently just as effective, though somewhat less hard-wearing 

I mentioned earlier that some of these boats had a definitely not likeable feature, and that was the seats. Our boat had perfectly normal sliding seats on wheels, but some of the boats didnt embrace the transportational qualities of the wheel even though the technique involved some sliding which was done on a low-friction plastic surface that I suspect didnt feel very low-friction after the first five minutes.

We never identified what sort of shorts were worn for rowing on these, though imagined that by the end of the row, "tattered" would be the most likely adjective to describe them.

Blades and pins
The boats all had sturdy iron fixed pins, curved towards the stern so that the blade didnt pop off in the event of a crab or clash. The blades had a plastic block bolted to the front of the shaft that was hooked over the pins, which mean you werent actually levering the blade on the pin at all. But it seemed to work, although some of the crew found it hard to stop trying to feather, especially when we hit wash.

The final new equipment feature we learned about was that the stroke blades were almost always a different colour from the rest, usually red. This was to mark them out from the others because they were shorter, which they had to be because the boats are narrower boat at that point.

Our boat came with what I can only describe as "traditionally-shaped blades" (macons they were not). Some of the other boats, particularly those from clubs, as opposed to being rental craft like ours, had wooden cleavers, although these were all just a rectangular flat bit stuck at an angle on the end of the shaft than anything more shaped. They worked, though!






The course
The water we were rowing on was quite unlike anything Ive come across before. Technically, it was a lake, but not in the usual sense of a big patch of open water. Rather the whole area, for hundreds of square kilometers, is a jumble of fairly flat, tree-covered land, and freshwater lakes, that sometimes feel more like rivers in their width. If "archipellagic" is an adjective, then this s exactly the kind of area it describes.

Many Finns have wooden summer cottages in this part of the country, and come here for much of July to chill out in the tranquil scenery, fish or swim from the docks at the lake shore and, for a few days, wave at the passing churchboat rowers.

The race took us round the "island" (again, were not talking a clearly-defined shape here) of Partalansaari, starting at the green point and finishing at the red, and the very clear corners we turned were encouraging, real indicators of progress.

There were quite a few small rocks emerging from the water along the bottom of the island, which our coxes negotiated skillfully, steering with an interesting design of tiller that curved round them so they could sit centrally in the stern.

The race

Bi-stroke rowing: unlikely ever to be an Olympic sport.

The Sulkava Rowing Race is actually a series of races and un-timed tours that take place over four days. We had opted to do the 60km race, but there was also a 70km tour where crews stopped half way and camped overnight, and various 20km races which could also be done in smaller boats including the "bi-stroke" where one person sculls while the other steers a bit and adds a little (which frankly cant help much) propulsive support with a canoe paddle.

The start of the race was the most fantastic melée that Ive ever had the good fortune to cox in. With "only" 50 crews in our division, it wasnt quite as seething as the 150-boat start wed watched the day before from a conveniently-placed road-bridge high over the water. 

Wed all been given starting grid positions, which we largely ignored, and as there hadnt been practise laps the day before, its not like this stopped a massive amount of overtaking, barging sideways, and daredevil holding ones nerve as we ploughed through narrow gaps between crews.

Despite having been warned by other competitors and a helpful spectator who we privately christened "trout hat man" (he had a trout embroidered on his hat: he did not sport a fish as headgear) to start slow, we were soon in 9th position, and going strongly. We noticed that crews we overtook immediately tucked straight in behind our stern, as if they were slipstreaming like cyclists or racing cars. This isnt something youd ever do in a VIII because youd just be slowed down by rowing in the faster crews wash. But with churchboats being more closely related to car ferries than fine racing shells, the rough water wasnt an issue, though Id be interested to hear the views of those who understand these things a lot more than me, on whether you can actually get a slipstreaming effect when youre going at only 12-14km/h.

Just before half way, our cox (Id swapped in to row after the first half hour) steered us an impressively daredevil course across the bows of a rather charming chain car ferry (which, fortunately, slowed down) as we watched the crews behind drop further back as they elected to take the longer route round its stern. 

The course was extremely well marked, and with crews staying reasonably close together the whole way, the whole race was very easy to navigate. And it really didnt seem long before the cox called out that he could see the town bridge that we knew was just beyond the finish, and we powered on through the last 1,000m. As we crossed the line, the announcer made a brave attempt at trying to pronounce all of our names, before delivering the bitter blow that our finish time was 5 hours and 9 seconds. Ooo, we SO could have gone 10 seconds faster. Still we finished in 15th place, 39 minutes behind the winners, and over 2 hours ahead of the last crew.

On landing, we were met by a local journalist who asked in tones of awe "Have you EVER rowed 60km before", and seemed  slightly disappointed when I explained that, yes, most of us had, and considerably further in fact. However, nothing is like rowing a churchboat, and the reason for her interest in us is that we were not only the only British crew (containing one Dutchman) but also the only one entirely made up of people taking part in the event for the first time. the programme showed the number of participations of each participant, which included one bloke who was on his 43rd time, and large numbers who had done it more than 20 times. Who knew?!

This year, about 5,500 people took part, down from its peak in the early Noughties when over 10,000 competed each year. I think its time for more UK crews to start entering, in a 21st century kind of reverse viking pillaging trip.

Rowing, but not as we know it
As well as the slipstreaming tactic, another thing we observed with surprise, was that quite a lot of crews had coxes who must have had excellent steering and motivational skills, because they sure werent chosen for their petite physiques...

And none of us had previously had the experience of overtaking a crew whose cox was puffing away on a cigarette either.

But my favourite "youre kidding me!" sight was the rower who appeared to have eschewed the usual selection of energy bars and bananas that most people were stowing by their rowing seats to keep them going on the way round, and had brought a large jar of gherkins with him. 

Gherkins on board: completely inexplicable.

Footnote on Finland
The race organisers in this delightful, tranquil, and very beautiful part of the world were immensely helpful and they, like every Finn we met, spoke excellent English. 

However, wanting to make the effort, we quickly learned the Finnish for "Thank you" (kiitos, pronounced KEY-toss"), which the locals seemed amused by us saying at the end of a detailed English conversation.

Incidentally, the word "kiitos" is a great example of typical Finnish spelling: as far as we could tell, it seems practically essential that any self-respecting Finnish word contains at least one "k" and a double vowel.

The two men from Monmouth Rowing Club in the crew enquired of a barman how to say "Cheers!" and reported back that it was "Get pissed". The rest of us were somewhat dubious about this until we heard some locals... it actually wasnt far off.

The historical documentary 
NB The single ladies in our crew were jolly careful not to leave their knife sheaths lying around: theyd come for a sporting challenge not in search of a husband! (Watch the videos and youll find out.)

Do you find information about Boden Boat Plans Australia are you looking for? If not, below may help you find more information about the Boden Boat Plans Australia. Thank you for visiting, have a great day.

Read More..

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.

Do you find information about Boat Blind Plans are you looking for? If not, below may help you find more information about the Boat Blind Plans. Thank you for visiting, have a great day.

Read More..