Daylight saving, Rowing NSW Life Memberships, LTR coaches needed, Missing equipment, Navigation, RNSW membership
Daylight Saving starts on Saturday night
On Saturday sunrise will be at 5.32am but on Sunday it will be at 6.31am.
As you know, lights are compulsory before sunrise so please remember to bring and use them.
Rowing NSW Life Memberships
Congratulations to Mosman Rowing Club stalwarts, Nick Garratt and Terry O’Hanlon, who were granted life membership of Rowing NSW at that organisation’s AGM on Wednesday evening. Their sterling and lengthy service to rowing in New South Wales certainly justifies this significant honour.
Learn to Row coaches needed
Our LTR and RFF programs earn the club much-needed revenue. We need coaches for Term 4 which starts on Saturday, October 15 and runs for eight weeks. You can choose to coach a session on Saturday or Sunday morning. If you can help please email Suzanne Hartley at learntorow@mosmanrowing.com
Missing equipment
Unfortunately, there have been some instances lately of private property such as lights and Speed Coaches disappearing from around the club. Please look after your gear and keep an eye out for anything untoward.
Channel from the pontoons
The channel from the pontoon is pretty wide at the moment which makes navigation less of a challenge. However, on the Spit Bridge side, there is a small black and white speedboat which looks like it is sticking into the channel. Please keep an eye out for it as it easy to run into.
I asked our local Maritime guy (official title, Boating Safety Officer, or BSO), Oliver Masens, to check the boat’s position with his on-board satnav. He says that, in fact, the boat is not in the channel. It just appears to be as the other boats moored on that side are even further outside the channel. So, now we know.
Rowing NSW membership
The racing season is fast approaching. Tiffany cannot process entries for regattas and other races unless your Rowing NSW membership is current. You can renew your membership here
Video of the week
Here’s a video of Middle Harbour taken from a drone last Saturday morning. It was shot and edited by Guy Morgan’s 12-year old son, Eddie. Nick Garratt has some serious, up-and-coming competition, it seems.
And below is a ‘toned-down’ version of a webpage describing the personality traits of the different seats in an eight. It certainly rings true for male crews. I am not so sure for female crews. Feedback welcome.
PERSONALITY TRAITS IN AN EIGHT
Cox:
It’s pretty obvious what traits a cox must adopt and tries to learn to do a good job in this most unique position in the athletic world. I’ll pass on the leadership stuff, napoleon complex garbage, and point out a secondary characteristic or two that coxes unintentionally inherit after riding in the box for a while. They can’t drive a car anymore. They take 10 miles to change a lane, oversteer, can’t find the brakes, and yell to the car a lot. This has nothing to do with the coxes’ former driving ability. Stick Ayrton Senna in a cox seat for a while, they’ll take his driver’s licence away. Coxes also begin to squint a lot, no loss in vision, they just squint.
Stroke:
‘It’s a tough job but only I can do it.’ The meekest, most frightened non-rower in the world; when plugged reluctantly in the stroke seat, stays meek up until the first few strokes. The first few strokes, a thought grows in the wimps’ snivelling little mind that this job is his/hers for life. Back on the shore, the real personality will percolate back to the surface. ‘I hope you guys could follow me ok.’ In the boat they’re thinking: ‘stop rushing, you weenies!’ Strokes are born and made to be the most competitive person in the boat by far, and if they stroke long enough, become overly competitive in everything they pursue, or don’t pursue. Don’t expect to finish a game of Monopoly, Risk, or Golf with a stroke. The only one that can beat him to the chow line is the three man (more later) because the stroke was delayed trying to put more oars away in the rack than anyone else.
Seven:
The seat is the Bitch Niche. I don’t know if whining, overly bossy, big-mouthed complainers are born, and I can’t believe that the cosmic effect of this seat could possibly be so instantaneous, but you could teach Mother Theresa to row in a tank, stick her in an eight at seven for the first time, and as the stern four is rowing away from the dock, she’ll turn around and yell at the bow four to ‘set the ******* boat.’ The longer one rows at seven, the more sophisticated and complex the bitching becomes, changing from a crude verbal rowing suggestion to the six man in the early stages to long winded level- voiced reasoned treatises after every piece explaining why the crew is slower now than last week. Ever wonder why when a coach drives up shell-side to ask how a piece went he says: ‘So how did that go, fellas? -not you seven.’ I was a team captain, looked up to leader of my college crew, kept my mouth shut and did my job. I raced one week at seven, my coach told me to ‘shut up Sullivan’ in a post-race meeting.
Six:
If you bred Arnold Schwarzenegger with a Golden Retriever, you get a six. Six is also Seven’s yin. The gentle giant, gorilla in the mist. Six absorbs most of Seven’s bitching and keeps it from moving through to the rest of the crew. Six nods and agrees a lot. It is a hard thing for a normal person to row Six. It seems like such a great seat, you’re in the stern, the boats more stable here, but you are done with a rowing career at six, you find you been used. Sixes are characterized by great competence in execution of rowing and life, but poor self-confidence and a propensity to self-flagellation. Take your 3 year stroke out of the stroke seat and stick him/her at six for a week. This will be the first time you ever hear him/her say: ‘My fault, fellas,’ at the end of a poor piece. Sixes meditate. Sixes marry, go to work for, and lend their power tools to sevens. This support system keeps sevens with thriving businesses, mates they can walk all over, and a garage full of power tools at their disposal that they don’t have to fix when they break.
Five:
God. Yahweh. Allah. Buddha. It’s not that the five seat IS those things, it’s just that’s how (s)he gets treated. Five’s **** don’t stink, the catches don’t hang. They’re the older brother or sister that gets special treatment, and has no idea. If a photo is taken of the crew, five will look great, everyone else is caught with shirt tails out, and snot on the lip. At heart and soul, five forgets to change oil, pay phone bills, and turn in forms to the IRS. Five is an example of what happens to a bum that is treated like a king, they act like one. Five has the greatest delta between image and reality. The fortunate thing is that the unearned unabashed worship lasts only as long as the time on the water. Five’s on his own back at home. Five wears aviator glasses.
Four:
The Amnesia-seat. Take a genius with a photographic memory. Row said genius at four. Listen to him ask for the third time in the same warmup, ‘How many of these 500s are we doing?’ Four seat is not stupid, just has immediate and catastrophic memory loss. At a start and 20, four settles at 21 because in the time the cox yelled ‘settle in two,’ he forgot. In a Novice boat where the seats have been removed and cleaned, it’ll be four’s that went back in backwards. Four will forget to tell the boatman about his(her) stripped rigger nut – usually from the time he is told by the coach, until he arrives at the boatman’s bench wondering what he’s doing there. On that first day on the water as the ice is breaking up, who is rummaging around the back of the boathouse looking for a sweatshirt? Four is why racing shirts are handed out on race day.
Three:
Late in the water. Late to practice. Late to class. Late to work. Late out of the water. Late to his date. Late to the team bus. Late for everything but chow line. There is no competitiveness involved here, just an uncanny knack to have the first three rowers into the dining hall stopped by friends for a brief discussion while three breezes on by to the tray stack. Three generally gets assigned a sitter.
Two:
Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight. Cheerleader. What is amazing, is to sit at four or five after a particular piece – seven is whining about the balance, the spacing, no swing, rushing: two is back there with pom poms saying: ALL RIGHT GUYS! LETS DO THAT AGAIN!… Two calls out names of power 10s. ‘Awright guys -OAR CLASH TEN!’ If he says something funny, he repeated something the bowman prompted him with.
Bow:
Comedian. The bow seat creates a strange fatalism. They know that in a catastrophic collision, they’ll be the only one to die or get paralysed. Consequently there is a constant quiet stream of one-liners that two or three could probably hear if two were not cheering loudly. If the bow is joined by a cox in a front-loader, this trait completely disappears, since someone is now likely to hear him joke about three being late, five not pulling hard, or the coxen’s course looking like a signature.(S)he can be humourless and witless off the water, but on the water when there is breath to spare, you’re sure to catch a chuckle if you listen.t 5.32am but on Sunday it will be at 6.31am.