I’ve been back to the rowing club several times now. Learning to row as part of a team is a challenge and not stopping to enjoy the view is one of the hardest parts.
But the rowing has been a lot easier since I changed boats. The veterans with whom I went out the first few times are a hard-arsed bunch. They smoke, they spit and their beer guts are pure muscle. And though I qualify in age for this boat I’m still a bit too soft and pink to make the grade. I’m now rowing with the junior team. We are rowing to compete so there’s no let up in the hour’s training session but there are other beginners onboard and if someone occasionally catches a crab we all get a brief rest while we untangle the oars. And when there’s football on the telly we knock off early.
Technically I’m too old to row with these bright young things but I act light on my toes and hold my tummy in and nobody seems to have noticed the permanence of my crow’s feet. I feel like an infiltrator and am not sure I actually want to compete but at least until my behind is as tough as a baboon’s I’ll keep applying the anti-wrinkle cream and plucking the grey hairs from my beard.
Estrop
Grommet
I’ve always rowed OB with a rope grommet holding the oar to the pin. I have now changed to an estrop, however, and am trying to ascertain the pros and cons of each.
When rowing there isn’t a marked difference though the grommet does seem to hold the oar to the pin more firmly. Comfortable rowing depends on the grommet or estrop having the correct tension—too loose and the oar’s all over the place. Tension varies as the rope stretches and the amount of stretch depends on the type of line and how wet the rope is. The estrop is adjustable and, having three turns of rope, stretches less than the grommet but a well-made grommet shouldn’t stretch beyond what is normal for the type of rope.
The most obvious advantage of the estrop over the grommet is that, being attached to the oar, it’s more difficult to lose. The last time I had an oar come off a pin the grommet plopped into the sea and sank. The other advantage is that when I take the oars off the pins and stow them in the boat for sailing in rougher weather, the estrop, with its long trailing end is good for attaching the oars to the thwart. This needs a picture to explain and I’ll post one soon.
For the moment I shall continue to row with estrops but in my heart I think I actually prefer grommets.
Estrop is the Catalan word for the length of line that holds the oar to the thole pin. It is one item of gear that the rowing club expects you to supply. They provide the boat and the oars, you provide the piece of string that joins the two together. I’d made my estrop quite carefully with three turns held together with a quintuple stopper knot and one half hitch. I’d got my gardening gloves, the same ones I use in OB when my hands get rowing red. And I’d put both items into a plastic carrier bag.
I arrived on the quay 10 minutes early. The rowing boats launch from the end of the fishing dock and from amongst a knot of fishermen inspecting a net I made out Carpet Slippers. Eventually he came over and started talking. I listened. At 72 he’s fairly old to still be competing but he generally comes along just to make up the numbers. He’s rowed all his life. He used to be a fisherman but, like many Catalan fishermen, he took the first opportunity he could to abandon the sea. ‘The sea’s a slave driver.’ He said. And took a job ashore at the Pirelli tyre factory. ‘When you’ve worked for years on the sea you learn to value a job that only demands a flat 8-hour day. You can make plans.’
We watched a fishing boat returning. ‘The skipper of that boat is one of the best rowers, but he doesn’t row anymore.’ The club’s story started to emerge. They’d won the Catalan league six years running. But now they were finding it hard to maintain the high standards they’d set. Most of the team doubted their ability to perform as well as they had in the past and a significant number were now of the opinion that it would be better not to compete at all than to compete and make fools of themselves. In previous years they’d trained three times a week, this year it was only two, and they’d started later in the season. This year the plan, though as yet unofficial, was to participate in the three annual friendlys, which ‘…are just an excuse for a big meal.’
Half an hour had gone by. ‘Nobody will turn up today.’ Said Carpet Slippers, ‘there’s football on the telly.’ He noticed my estrop and gloves. ‘Lets see that.’ he took the estrop for examination, turned it over in his hands, grunted and passed it back.
I would sail and row more if I had a safe launching and landing spot. So, hoping to increase my time on the water, albeit in a different boat, and wanting to turn the fat around my waist into muscle on my shoulders I went to the local marina for a test run with the rowing team.
The Catalan open water rowing boat is a traditionally shaped llagut made of thick fibreglass with a slightly faster underwater profile than usually associated with this type of craft. Crewed by a cox and eight oarsmen with wide, spade-bladed oars affixed to nylon thole pins the boats develop quite a lot of power. But not a great deal of speed. Their relatively short waterlines and heavy build ensure that rowing is always uphill. Or at least that is how it seemed to me on my first outing.
On the quay I was glad to see that the atmosphere wasn’t too sporty. The crew carried their gear in plastic shopping bags and wore gardening gloves. One older man, with arms and neck as hard and sinewy as olive tree branches, arrived in his carpet slippers. I’d brought no gear at all and wondered if anyone might help me out. I stood watching as individuals produced their personal lengths of line to attach their oars to the pins. Nobody seemed interested that there was a newcomer on the dock.
It was Carpet Slippers who eventually lent me some line, but not before he’d given me a curt lecture about all the wusses that turned up to row and hobbled off afterwards, never to return. I replied that one shouldn’t expect too much from beginners, or treat them too harshly and he suggested that maybe I should join the women’s team. Then he produced a grubby piece of foam and placed it under his haunches. ‘You’ll burn your arse if you don’t have one of these.’ He said before spitting into the water.
I was allotted the starboard bow oar with a good view of Carpet Slippers’ walnut-skinned neck in front of me. I looked about the boat. It had no flotation chambers, no buoyancy bags, no bilge pumps, no bailers and no buoyancy aids. Now, (to borrow from A.A. Milne) nobody could call me a fussy man—but I do like a little bit of buoyancy to my boat.
We pushed away from the quay and the cox commanded us to row. Being used to rowing alone I had to concentrate hard to stay in time. On the couple of occasions that I managed to foul my oar on Carpet Slippers’ I received an ‘ALL TOGETHER!’ from the cox and a disgusted grunt from somewhere aft. We rowed out of the marina. A stiff easterly breeze blew and I was surprised when the cox turned the boat west and we set off downwind. If I’m out for a recreational row I never go downwind on the first leg. To row downwind I have to row upwind first. It’s the same when I’m sailing. It’s partly for safety—if anything goes wrong it’s easy to get home, but also because downwind is the treat, the pudding, and without having clawed upwind first I find it difficult to enjoy.
We heaved away downwind. The cox counted us into sprints but I hadn’t been informed of the training plan and only by focusing very hard on maintaining the space between my oar and that in front could I keep up. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that it was a beautiful evening with a littering of gilt-rimmed clouds in the west and a low, rosy light. The sea was getting all wine dark and Homeric and pearly spray flew by but there was not a moment for enjoyment. It was focus, focus, focus underpinned with worry about the distance we were rowing downwind and the struggle we’d surely have to row back.
We had rowed about two miles when the cox turned the boat to face the wind, which had climbed to the top end of a force 4. The wide oar blades caught the breeze and became unwieldy. We began to slog. I couldn’t believe that in these conditions nobody feathered their oars and felt that I might be getting above myself by feathering mine. But not feathering meant expending unnecessary energy on the return stroke. And I had no energy to waste, indeed I doubted I had enough to get back to the marina.
We rowed into the steep chop, the bow occasionally crashing down and spray coming aboard. Trying to regulate my breathing I noticed the amount of water sloshing about in the bottom of the boat. The cox crouched in the stern keeping out of the wind and urging us to row harder. I wondered if I could flick a packet of water at him without losing my stroke.
Keeping my more mutinous feelings at bay we eventually pulled into calmer waters in the lee of the marina and so to the dock. I wondered if there might be some sort of commentary on the outing or if we’d go for a drink but everyone went straight to their cars. I returned the length of line to Carpet Slippers secretly hoping he might say, ‘You didn’t do too badly kid.’ But he just took the line and went.
Now the question is: Should I go back for the next session? Reasons against returning: I can’t enjoy the sea in the way that I’m accustomed, the boat and its handling don’t conform to my ideas of safety, it costs 100 euros for a six month season, I’m not a natural team player and the atmosphere is downright unfriendly.
Reasons for returning: Good exercise and, that good old precursor of a fall, PRIDE. I was piqued by Carpet Slippers’ suggestion that I am a soft-arsed wuss. And I will eat my own carpet slippers (not his, which are rancid) if I’m not up to this.
There’s no doubting the incredible feat of sailing 32-foot wooden ketch non-stop around world and Robin Knox-Johnston’s 313-day solo circumnavigation of 1968/69 marks a pinnacle of endurance and resourcefulness. From an armchair world it is nigh impossible to imagine how appallingly lonely and frightening that sort of sailing must have been.
In his book ‘A World of my Own’ something of Knox-Johnston’s remarkable character comes through. It is a rare breed of person that has the will to keep the emotions at bay in extreme situations. RKJ had (and probably still has) an ability to establish order and dominance over situations through the single-minded completion of tasks. This particular pragmatism, often found amongst great yachtsmen, combined with his fierce patriotism and conviction that a Briton should be the first to complete a solo non-stop circumnavigation led to his success.
My favourite part of the book comes as he passes Cape Horn. After a gruelling 146 days in the Southern Ocean (nearly twice as long as it took Michel Desjoyeaux to complete an entire circumnavigation in the last Vendee Globe), after gales, knockdowns and continual repairs Suhaili reached the Horn on Jan 17th 1969.
In the log Knox-Johnston wrote, ‘YIPPEE!!!’ and in his diary, “We’ve passed it!!! Spliced the mainbrace and broke out Aunt Aileen’s fruit cake. I carefully removed the foil wrapping and the aroma hit me. The flavour and the taste are even better than the smell. I’ve cut a reasonable slice as I’ll make it last a bit if I can. It has withstood over seven months in its tin magnificently. To add to my pleasure there is a piece of The Times in the tin so I have something new to read as well.”
What a powerful and poignant evocation of home Aunt Aileen’s fruit cake is when contrasted with 219 days at sea in solitude. I imagine the battered tin, worn down to bare metal from constant movement inside the lockers. (One tin even wore so thin as to leak, emptying its contents of potent disinfectant into the bilges.) And inside the tin the smell of old newspaper, a page of The Times with the odd grease stain from where the suet had leaked through the foil.
On the most feared body of water in the world RKJ takes a double tot of whisky and settles down to read The Times while tucking into Aunt Aileen’s fruit cake. This should be the cake to celebrate all sailing achievements. Does anybody have the recipe?
