I think I’m in love. I feel a little guilty about this, but it’s just that long-distance relationships are so hard, and you can’t really have the physical side of thins at all, and then when you meet someone new, someone local, and that one is all pretty and sleek and stiff….
Yes, I’ve been cheating on my boat. I feel a little guilty about it; poor thing is stuck hanging up from the ceiling in my in-law’s garage and doesn’t even get to so much as taste the water. (Maybe I should ask my MIL to mist her occasionally?) Mostly since we’ve been here I’ve enjoyed rowing the double with L – how could I not, with all that power in the stroke seat? But any time I’ve rowed in one of the club’s singles, I’ve missed my boat. The club boats are mostly Filippis, and they’re not bad, but they’re heavier than my boat, and slower, and they just don’t fit as well. Also, club boats always are heavier and clumsier than privately owned elite boats – they have to be made that way because they get more abuse. Last week I got to row Rudder’s doubles parter’s Empacher – that’s a top-quality boat, but it’s a midweight. It’s not as bad as a heavyweight would be, of course, but it’s still enough too big for me that I just sort of wallow around in it.
Yesterday and today, though, I got to row a lightly-used Sykes, and it was like night and day. I think this one might even be stiffer than my own Hudson. It’s at least as light as mine, though not nearly as pretty. It was just such a huge relief to sit in a boat and have room for my calves! For one they weren’t hitting the edge of the cockpit on every stroke. It’s not nearly as adjustable as the Hudsons, but fortunately it fits me well; the oar height is just right, the shoes are the right size, it doesn’t float up like a cork. TThere are two things Idon’t quite understand: they’ve downgraded this boat from a racing to a training one, and they have it listed as a 70-kg boat (that is, to fit 70-k rowers. I think the two things might be related. This boat fits me (55 kg) so well I can’t imagine it being a good fit for someone 15 kilos heavier. Maybe it’s not stiff enough with that weight in it.
Yesterday’s row was still pretty miserable; it was cold and windy and raining. The crosswind kept blowing me into the side of the canal. Rudder was going out today again and the weather was so nice I went along. Cool, but calm and sunny and the boat fit me and just ….ahhhhhh.
You are too funny. I have to ask you about the name Empacher, though. A long time ago, in the 1970’s, I worked for Ted Hood Sails in Marblehead, MA. He captained a ship back then in the America’s Cup raises off Newport, RI, and he was our boss. Anyway, while working there (alongside my first husband) in the sail loft making sails, we knew a man called Dietre Empacher, and he worked up in the offices of Hood Sails as a designer of boats and sails. He also bought a house on the street where I grew up in Marblehead. I’m wondering if Deitre Empacher is in any way related to the Empacher boats. He was foreign I remember, and spoke with an accent back then we we knew him, so I’m sure he came from Scandanavia.
I found something on “my” Deitre – http://www.dieterempacher.com/ – that’s him, the one I knew. I grew up at 37 Evans Road in Marblehead. What a small world. But he’s probably not the same one – I also saw when I googled this there was a Willy Empacher, but maybe that was his father!