The crew have continued to meet at Cantabs Rowing Club to make use of the Concept 2 rowing machines there. So far we haven't managed to get all 8 members along to the boat house at the same time, but everyone has been along at some put for a group training session of between 1 hour to 1.5 hours. We will be repeating the 2 hour session at some point before we next go to Hayling Island.
The biggest event over the last few weeks was our second trip to Hayling Island on Friday 15th June. The day before our outing it was looking doubtful as to whether we'd actually get out on the water, as the weather forecast was awful, with the worst storm in 50 years predicted. Fortunately, the forecast was way off and the weather was almost pleasant, except for the high winds. Expecting heavy rain and cold conditions all crew members got wrapped up in full waterproofs and thermals. One of our problems was then finding we had too many clothes on and over heating on the row.
Our rowing coach, Mike Gilbert, was rather more quiet and serene on this outing compared to our first trip. There was one anxious moment whilst leaving the marina, when the wind was blowing us towards a rather expensive yacht, and the crew hadn't quite got their act together with the backing down instruction (rowing backwards). Mike's anxiety was heightened by the fact that the owner of the yacht was standing on deck watching us inch towards his precious boat. Fortunately, everyone got their act together in time to prevent us scratching his hull.
Once out on the estuary things came together beautifully. Everyone managed to row in time with stroke for a good 85% of the outing, compared to probably 10 to 15% on our first trip. The stroke rate was also spot on. Mike had told us that we should aim for 24 strokes per minute, and this is what we've been practising on the rowing machines. Every now and again Mike would check our rating and report back that we were hitting exactly 24 strokes per minute each time. This was with four different people in the stroke seat over the 3 hour row.
Conditions weren't good. On leaving the marina we were faced with a strong head wind. The plan had been to make it all the way out to sea. As it happens the sea conditions were to rough for us, and the wind also kept us back. We did manage to get into the bubbly stuff for a few minutes. Just enough to experience how hard it is to row in large waves with the boat being lifted and dropped by the swell. Trying to keep in time was very hard in the rolling sea. I was sitting in the stroke seat at the time and I'd find myself going from pulling my blade through water and then suddenly find it in thin air as it came out the back of a wave. The sudden drop in resistance would have me fightng to stay upright on my seat and not rolling over backwards.
After briefly experiencing large waves we turned round and got mostly blown back to the marina. The effect of a tail wind made the rowing feel really light, which some crew members found harder to deal with than rowing hard into the head wind. However, once we were all back on dry land and sat around to analyse our performance everyone was really pleased with how the trip had gone. The improvement over the previous outing was immense and everyone was full of confidence that a row across the Channel to France is now something that is achievable. I only hope we continue to show progress on our next rowing outing in a few weeks.
