Dichroic Reflections

Fare you well, Sunset

This morning I rowed one lap then packed up my boat for good, or at least for a while. Depending on what adventures come our way, she will spend the next 1-4 years hanging from the ceiling of my in-laws' garage. This is not a happy place for the boat; there's NO WATER there. (At least, not unless something is very wrong.) My boat loves the water. Whenever I leave her at the side of the beach without oars holding her down she tries to run off to sea. I don't think she will enjoy life in a garage, grateful as I am to my in-laws for hosting her.

We had one last lap this morning before unrigging and loading her up. I kept thinking, "the last time" - the last time I'd move her from the rack to the slings, the last time I carried her to the lake, the last time we set off from the beach, went through the bridges, made the turn, came back in. I'll row her again someday, but it's likely to be in another place entirely.

She is a Hudson Elite single, a better boat than my skills deserve; her stablemates race at high levels, including for the US and Canadian national teams, in regattas like the World Championships and the Olympics. I've let her down a few times, coming last in some races, but she's never let me down. There was an ugly race in Long Beach a few years ago, when I watched videotape of myself flopping around at the finish, losing focus from fatigue, when I swore to myself that however I did in my races I would never watch videotape like that again. I might finish last but I would finish strong and controlled, rowing hard and focused and never giving in no matter how the race went. I've kept that vow; there have been races since when I finished last, but never one I was embarassed to have rowed. I feel I've lived up to my boat a little, in that time.

Under the wide and wind-wracked sky,
We scud along, my boat and I.

We took delivery of Sunrise and Sunet, my boat and Rudder's, in July four years and a week ago.

The boats are patterned after the Arizona state flag. My boat is a little smaller than Rudder's and is distinguished by stars on the deck, in the shape of the Big Dipper from the Alaska flag - we had just returned from Alaska when they arrived. Together, we have rowed under starry winter skies before subrise and under the clouds that Arizona hides in the dawn, that disappear as the sun climbs. We're rowed on mirror-smooth water and in waves rough enough to splash over the deck. We've seen hundreds of sunrises and a couple of sunsets, watched egrets and pelicans fly over, rowed by seals in Mission Bay and a beaver than somehow found its way to Tempe. We've rowed together in Tennessee and Arizona, Louisiana and Oregon, California and Nevada, done races of 300 meters and races of 26.2 miles. We've worked through distance training and speed training, changes in technique and uncountable drills, hard practices much too early in the morning and relaxed daytime paddles. We've been out in 32-degree frosty mornings in the dark and under 100-degree Arizona sun. There have been dents and dings for both of us, blisters and paint chips and sore muscles and fiberglass repairs.

“Of all sports, rowing offers the least to outward seeming. It is hard work unleavened by variety. Worse, a man attending to business can't see where he is going. The pleasure compensating for this madness is at once simple and subtle. A need of men, generally denied, them, is to feel a part of something which works smoothly and well. In a mated crew the ideal is reached, the feeling of perfection passing back and forth from the individual to the team like an electric current. Until exhaustion breaks the spell, there is no more to be desired.”

--from "Silverlock", by John Myers Myers, a man who clearly know his way around a shell

Rowing shells are fast but fragile. The elite boats are not forgiving of bad form, but reward each improvement of technique with another bit of speed. They don't deal well with rough water, high wind, or rocky beaches and a rower can't see where she's going. A kayak is much better for exploring, but on flat water a rowing shell can leave a kayak far behind. Their stiff fragility and the care they need means that rowing shells don't last long unless they're well-cared for.

Tomorrow, Rudder leaves to drive to the Masters National Championship Regatta in Seattle. (He's borrowing She-Hulk's single to race in.) On the way back he will leave my boat and his double at his parents' house in Oregon. I can't really complain to Rudder, not after his boat was totalled in a freak windstorm last week. I can't complain at work, where I really don't want to explain why we're sending the boats away. But I will miss my Sunset on the water in the sunrise.

Posted by dichroic at August 4, 2006 11:36 AM