So I started taking rowing classes yesterday because I though it would be a fun skill to have. The first thing the made us do was watch a safety video – which was a little funny and scary. Afterwards, we had to lift the boat and take it from the boat-house to the river. There were 8 of us in the class, so we used an 8-man boat that’s about 60 feet long and weighs about a million pounds – at least that’s what it felt like. Instructions were given – actually shouted - using ‘rowing terminology.’ This kinda made things confusing since we didn’t know what they were talking about. Terms like ‘port’ (left-side of boat) and ‘’starboard” (right-side of boat) were familiar but others like ‘way-nuff’ (stop) weren’t. We were each given a seat number counted from the bow of the boat – I was number 7 – and told to take an oar, which differed depending on whether you were rowing on the starboard side or port side. After we placed the boat in the water, we were show how to get in and how to do the rowing technique. The seat actually slides back and forth, and the rowing technique is actually powered by the legs, not the arms. This makes it difficult to master.
After being in the boat, things can get a little confusing. There were actually nine people in the boat. The eight rowers are actually sitting backwards, and this means that port is on your right and starboard is on your left. The ‘coxswain’ (guy barking order at us through a speaker called a ‘coxbox’) sits at the stern facing the rowers. We were shown how to ’set’ (balance) the boat by lifting the oars. After a little bit of rowing, were docked the boat and lifted back to the boat-house. The most tiresome part of the whole thing was actually lifting the boat.
