Head of the Charles 2021 Coxswain Video – Women’s Senior Master 50+ Four скачать в хорошем качестве

Head of the Charles 2021 Coxswain Video – Women’s Senior Master 50+ Four

(bowloader POV) This was the most mentally draining Head of the Charles I’ve raced in recent memory. I felt that the symbiosis between the rowers and myself was present throughout this race; in the times when I needed to focus on steering us out of potentially bad situations, I still felt their power behind me, and I knew that they trusted me to steer a good line. 4 Lisa 3 Liz 2 Shirine 1 Barbara Bow 32, finished 20th out of 33 STEERING: The crew warned me that the steering in this shell had been an issue. On land, I checked the rudder and confirmed that “straight” was actually a point where the center steering stock was deviated to the right. I only had one practice in the shell, and I found that I would steer based on how I would instinctively expect the boat to respond, and that would result in moving much further to port than I expected from a given rudder movement. I also had not been in a bowloader since HOCR 2019, which may have contributed. This shell had nowhere to mount a CoxBox, and because I used a CoxBox GPS that needs to be held stationary in order to give proper readings, I settled for tucking it under my arm, which sometimes resulted in the weird steering handoff between my left and right hands that you see in the video. In general I’m pleased with the course I took, but I’m displeased that I managed it with what the video reveals to be constant steering adjustments that are more drastic than I would like. CALLS: I haven’t often taken advantage of the split data provided by the CoxBox GPS, but this was something the crew had expressed was a motivator. Listening back, I’m overall pleased with the calls in terms of variety, information, and motivation. Probably could have provided a relevant technical point to address set. 0:00 START Timed it pretty well. At this point race officials were asking us to maintain 3 boatlengths of distance between us, and officials on the final launch before the chute were explicitly dictating when each of us should start rowing. 1:47 MAGAZINE BEACH I knew we only had one boat behind us in the event (bow 33, New Haven), so my main concern was enabling a safe pass for them. Around this turn my bow seat said that bow 33 was “closing” so I came off my line, but they didn’t end up completing the pass until later in the powerhouse stretch. We gave up some meters with that, so in the future I’d seek a way to optimize this communication with bow seat. 5:18 POWERHOUSE STRETCH Here we get passed by the boat behind us, but the pass takes them a long time. As we passed under River Street, I caught sight of an umpire looking down over us from on top of the bridge, so I also made a point of sitting up and looking back, to show the ref that I was aware of the situation and was trying to enable this coxswain to make a clean pass. 10:32 WEEKS BRIDGE This was one of the most stressful parts of the race. Fortunately bow 33 had just passed us and were now passing bow 31 (Greenwich), but 33 swung out a bit wide in preparation for the turn, and these two ended up entangling to the point of a full stop on the opposite side of the bridge. Fortunately, there was space for me to squeeze in on the port side of both of them and take my Weeks turn about how I wanted. I’m disappointed that I second-guessed myself and eased off the turn a bit; I think I could have stayed on the rudder and made it around a stroke or two earlier, since I still needed a bit of starboard pressure as we exited the bridge. 11:55 ANDERSON BRIDGE There was so much traffic surrounding me that I knew I wasn’t going to get to approach this bridge exactly as I’d hoped. The primary goal was not turning into the boat next to me. I wasn’t too worried about being on the “outside” of this turn, because I knew I’d be on the correct side for the next turn to port. 14:13 BIG TURN Here we had a near-issue where a slower crew (bow 28, Cortlandt) moved out to allow a boat in front of me to pass (bow 33), but the coxswain tried to cut back to their desired line without noticing that I was also coming up behind them. I stuck to my line and tried to communicate with that coxswain. In prior years in a bowloader I’ve been able to carve out a smooth curve from buoy to buoy, but this situation sometimes distracted me and caused that line to not be as clean as I wanted. My crew responded well to a call to get ahead of bow 28 after the pass (even if I misspoke and called it Weeks at first, oops). I was concerned about not being completely clear of them and getting hit as I crossed from port to starboard under Eliot. 18:10 ELIOT BRIDGE Luckily this final turn went easily given our shell’s natural tendency to pull to port. I really didn’t need much from starboards to accomplish it. 19:41 FINAL TURN Shortly after getting the point I wanted on the last buoy off the Belmont Hill dock, I noticed a branch sticking out of the water and came away from shore a bit in an effort to avoid it. I counted the finish well!