Row Hard, No Excuses!
Pilot gig racing is big sport in the Isles of Scilly. The World Pilot Gig Championships, held annually on the small islands southwest of Cornwall, England, attracted 103 men’s and 95 women’s teams for the 2007 event.
Here in the U.S., gig racing is little known, but for those who participate in North America’s only open water racing circuit, the annual Snow Row in Hull, Massachusetts is the signature event.
It was the coldest morning of the winter when we hitched up the trailers and began the drive south to Boston Harbor. Fifteen below zero outside Gypsy’s door and twenty-four below at Geoff’s home in Westford. A snowstorm was forecast for the return trip on Saturday evening, but bad weather wouldn’t deter the two crews that set out from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum last Friday morning.
Among the sixty boats lined up on the beach for this year’s March 1st race, more than a dozen were gigs. Vermont is usually well represented in the race, but forecasts for a winter storm kept the youth crews at home this year. (The Champlain Longboats program at the Maritime Museum has been building a new pilot gig each year since 2000. Its fleet of nine boats is the largest this side of the Atlantic - perhaps even in the world!)
Above, one of the Vermont crews prepares for some pre-race practice in the Saturday morning rain.
Rowers compete on a 3.75 mile course at the southern entrance to Boston Harbor. The start is “Lemans style,” with all the bows on the beach and the crews standing ready thirty feet away. When the gun sounds, racers run for their boats, leap over the bow, and scramble to their assigned oar. The rower closest to the bow pushes the gig off the beach, hops aboard, and the race is under way. In tight quarters among the other 32-foot gigs, crews have to turn the boats 180 degrees before they can start pulling toward the first turn at Sheep Island. (We are the boat at the lower right corner of the picture above.) There are inevitable collisions and tangled oars, but soon the racers have settled into the rhythm for the haul.
The mighty “Fishcakes” have been rowing in the Snow Row for eight years. Above, our leader and coxswain, Geoff Kerr, steers us off the beach for a pre-race warm-up run. Below, the rest of the crew sits ready at the oars. I’ll be pulling the stroke oar. Next in line sits “Papa” Nick Patch, followed by Jeff Meyers and finally Jeff Severson on the number one oar at the bow.
We arrive each year in Hull with a few more grey hairs and admissions to being sorely out of shape. Moments before the starting gun went off, I turned to my teammates and confessed, “This is going to hurt really bad.”
It doesn’t matter. The bumper sticker we found years ago sums up the spirit of the event. “Row Hard, No Excuses.”
We finished well ahead of all boats in the four-oared class, winning our division. The following line from Geoff Kerr’s post-race email sums it up well.
“That was the best time in ages guys, thanks for letting me play too. I can't help but be satisfied at how dominating we'd be if we gave a damn! Between natural ability and evil genius we are tops.”
*My ability to photograph the event is limited by the fact that both hands are clutching an oar, but you can Click Here for photos from the 2007 race.