Your Other Right!

Kathleen, being raised a (Long Island) "bay girl," is always giving me grief about my directions while rowing. I'm in the bow seat, so it's my job to look back, decide which way we should be going, and give directions for how to get there. Her job is to set the stroke rate, be steady with it, and do whatever I tell her for direction.

I tell her when we need "power on the left/right" to do a gradual turn or slight course adjustment. Since we have a wider-than-racing shell, we can do "all on the left/right" where we keep the opposite blade flat on the water and pull only on one side. (I have a suspicion we'd tip ourselves over if we did this with a bonafide [REALLY narrow] racing shell.) This allows us to do a pretty sharp turn. Finally, if we're at a stand still, we can do a corkscrew turn in place with her pulling with one hand while I push with the opposite.

Since we are facing towards the back, we have to pull on the side opposite from where I want us to go. The grief comes from my mixing this up and saying "right" when I want to go towards the right. I should be saying "left." In the open water, it's no harm no foul because I realize my goof fairly quickly and we have plenty of room. In the tight confines of our cove, or when we're fast approaching a quiet fisherman, it's a different story.

On the return leg of our trip last Sunday, we're taking a long run straight with the wind in our faces - blowing at the stern of the boat. We're looking to make time back home to finish off the lawn work for liming, fertilizing, and seeding. This stretch involves threading our way between a really small island, a big one, and two points of land. Did I remember to re-iterate that we are facing AWAY from where we're going?

One other tidbit ... I'm about as limber as a decent piece of lumber. One day, in high school gym class, the coach is doing his usual job of humiliating the geek wearing glasses. We're doing some kind of stretching exercises and he keeps calling four eyes an old man because I can't stretch worth a damn. I haven't improved much and, now verging on old fartdom, it's quite a challenge to turn around 90 degrees on the swayback, get a good view of what we're about to run into, and keep up with the stroke.

Back to the story ... we're humping it on the way back with a strong wind and I'm trying to thread us between islands on the port side and land on the starboard. I'm twisting one way to get a look on one side then the other for the other side. I call out "power on the right" and we ever so slowly start trending in the direction I want. After awhile, I comment "shooie, why is it taking so long to turn right?" "Argh!!!!" is her response because she's been pulling with her right while I've been pulling with my left.

Maybe you had to be there. ;-)