Rowing the Harvest

Article by Richard Van Voris

In September I rowed my single scull under a Harvest Moon and a million stars. I rowed , through the otherworldly light of that night on water of black glass. It was, for me, a transcendent moment alone on a beautiful and well-loved pond on Cape Cod.

Because this is a small boat site I will tell you about the boat. She is a single scull, 27 feel long and 11 ½ inches at her widest beam. She is named Boanne, after the Celtic goddess of rivers and poets.

I built her some years ago to the body plan provided by Graham King, the great Australian shell designer and builder. I modified her somewhat with permission from the designer to accept a modern wing rigger, which I purchased from RowFit in Australia. The hull is built from 1/8” thick 3/4” wide, red cedar strips, beveled and glued. I covered both the outside and the interior with 2oz. fiberglass cloth set in epoxy. I eliminated the traditional ribs and much of the interior framing as being redundant with the wing rigger and monocoque construction. I further strengthened her to take the stress of the rowing stroke, with carbon fiber tape set in epoxy and vacuum bagged diagonally fore and aft on the inside, from the rigger shelf to the keelson. Cored carbon fiber was used for bulkheads. The deck is cored 2 oz. glass with a cedar detail rather that King’s more “soft” deck of heat shrunk Dacron.

She is a four pounds heavier than I hoped she would be at 38 pounds, but I am a few pounds heavier than I would like to be as well. Boanne, is a joy to row, if I treat her right. She sets up easily and she “runs out,” holding her way through the water on the recovery part of the stroke, better than any boat I have ever rowed. I have been told this is characteristic of a King hull. When I am in Boanne I feel she is a part of me and that I am finally completely whole. Now 15 years after I built her I have rowed this boat almost two million meters according to my log. I take her out about 70 times a season rowing in various venues. After all that use and a few repairs, she is still a joy and stiffer than I would have expected.

She is demanding of course, all single sculls are, she especially does not like it when I carry extra stuff aboard—like job issues or worries about my kids. And she lets me know when she is unhappy, rolling around, slopping water into the footwell. I can almost hear her say “Hey, pay attention here”

And so I do, and when I do, I row well, perhaps not race fast, I carry too much bulk on me, but as well as my physical limits will allow. But if I am rowing well; quick catches, clean releases, fast, light hands away and moving smoothly up the slide, that’s it. The stem opens up the water with the sound of tearing silk and the wake is a silver tail in the moonlight.

It is then we are as one, my boat and I, and at night, on water like a black mirror, under the stars and moon I am free.

At the end of the row I realize this: That for all my faults, foibles and failures there was this undeniable wonderful thing. At age 60 I had rowed a single scull, one that I had built myself, through a magical night. And furthermore I had rowed well, and when I am rowing well, I am closest to who I aspire to be, fully alive and free from the burden of self. Connected through the trinity of oars and hull with the water and through that black mirror to the infinite. That contact is not constant however but must be initiated, released and made again to progress. This is the nature of the rowing stroke.

Rowing invites metaphor—a sport of moving backwards, balanced precariously on this wooden splinter glimpsing only briefly what lies ahead, seeing much more clearly what has passed. It is the very stuff of life. Rowing can mean intense competition for many athletes, and more power to them. But for me it is a spiritual exercise, a moving meditation. Never more so than in the darkness, and it can be so, so beautiful, under a harvest moon. •SCA•