Dichroic Reflections

Monday's incident

I have a race on Sunday. In addition, I will be turning 35 that day. Therefore, I
should probably be concentrating on eating healthier. None of this stopped me from
having decaf coffee (I'm a wimp and can't drink the real stuff) with half-and-half
and sugar and a cherry turnover for breakfast. Oh, well. We athlete types need fat
for energy, right?

I don't believe I've written about what happened
at rowing the other day. Other than the upcoming race, the excitement on the lake
this week happened on Monday, when a city quad, rowed by Hardcore, She-Hulk, and
two guys, flipped over. I was in another quad with three women from the club; we
saw them a bit after it happened, by which time they had gotten their boat to the
side, gotten out of the lake, and were trying to get some water out of the boat.
We hollered over to them, then went to get our coach, about 1000m away, to go in
his launch to help them. We got over to the end of the lake where he was, and,
yelled and screamed and whistled (the well-prepared Dr. Bosun had a loud whistle
with her) but AussieCoach, concentrating on the two eights he was watching, didn't
hear us. He sped on by and we had to row halfway back up the lake to fetch him.
By then, the other four were back in their boat, heading to the beach, but he went
and helped them in. They got there as we were taking out our oars, and AussieCoach
sent us up to get towels for them. On the way up, we saw their coach (not Yosemite
Sam, the other one) talking to a ranger, so we told him what had happened. It
turned out the ranger had pulled his launch off the lake for not having proper
lights. The ranger had told his eight to come in, but hadn't notified the quad. I
gave the coach the blanket and some fleece clothing I had in my truck, then sped
off to work. As I left, She-Hulk and one of the guys were carrying oars up, and I
later found out Dr. Bosun had told them to go home and marshaled club people to
carry their boat up. They'd spent about 30-40 minutes in the water and in wet
clothes, from the time they tipped until they got back in.

If you
weren't there, the amount of sheer dumb-assery and other mistakes implicit in that
story may not be evident.

• First, the coach went out, well before
  dawn, in a launch without lights. This is against the local rules and is unsafe
  besides.
• Next, the ranger told the eight to come in, but not the
  quad. This is somewhat equivocal; it sounds like there was faulty communication
  somewhere there and the ranger didnÕt understand there were two boats out. Also,
  though it's against city rules, I don't honestly think rowing without an
  accompanying launch is all that dangerous – the club didn't have one at all until
  a few weeks ago. Still, the city people expect to have a launch for rescue, and
  they should have been told to come in when they didn't have one, by the policy of
  the city, which employs the rangers.
• The ranger didn't see the
  flipped quad. This isnÕt equivocal at all – what's the point of having them out
  there if they don't look around?
• AussieCoach also went by the quad
  twice without seeing them. Rowers are supposed to focus, but a coach needs to
  maintain awareness of what else is going on.
• AussieCoach didn't see
  or hear us when we first yelled to him. See above.
• The people in
  the quad, three of whom are experienced scullers, didn't know how to turn it back
  over and get back in, to rescue themselves. They did rescue themselves in the end,
  but they could have saved a lot of time in the water. At 6AM. In February. And
  it's not especially clean water, either.

This is
serious – they were lucky the water has begun to warm up a little. People have
died from that sort of thing. I called Unknown Legend to suggest a bit more about
rowing in ranger training; Rudder emailed her to suggest that how to right an
overturned boat be added to the rower training.