Sculling in the quad

Sunday the 23rd.

Sunday practice often has more people at it than the others I attend, and this one was no exception- which meant we got to do something I haven't done before- take out a quad!

A quad is different from a 4, because a 4 is sweep (one oar each) and a quad is sculling (two oars each).  I really love sculling, so I was super excited about this. Even more exciting- I wasn't bow seat or stroke seat, so my only job was to do what bow says (there is no cox in this boat) and keep my oars at the same pace as stroke.  No steering to think about, no setting the pace.

It was WONDERFUL!  I had so much fun in this boat, and really hope we get to take it out again. My only complaint is I think we spent too long rowing by 2s, as it is much more fun to row by 4s, and our balance was fine, and it didn't appear the steering issues were any different by 2s or 4s.   As a team, we really stunk at steering- apparently the rudder on the boat wasn't working very well either.  We kept finding ourselves very far into the middle, or wrong side of the river.  In that respect the quad is much harder to row than the double.  I think the person in charge of steering almost needs to act ahead, proactive, not reactive because it takes longer to get it repositioned.  That- or we just all stunk at rowing heavier on one side!  I'm just thankful it wasn't my responsibility, because it is definitely a tough job.  Oddly enough, the big issue we had had to do with us swerving the way we hadn't been swerving the entire practice.  We were rowing and the bow seat calls "heavy on starboard" and then just two strokes later the bow seat calls "weigh enough" (stop), and we all start dragging the oars down, and CRASH.  Ooops.  Apparently the rocks on the shoreline didn't want to get out of our way.  Luckily we were going slower when we hit, so we didn't damage the boat (I don't think...).  We didn't drag up onto the rocks at least.  There were people walking along the road who saw us though...that was kind of embarrassing.

So other than the minor collision, a fabulous row.  And it turned out our stroke seat was brand new, just her second practice.  She did really well! Nice even pace that was easy to follow.