It’s a warm Sunday morning in late July. The river is quiet. The only sounds are the paddling of two swans and their fluffy half-grown cygnet, a lot of ducks quacking, a weeping willow swishing very softly in the breeze and the splash of oars as a rowing boat comes upstream. And then:-
“*#$%!^*%!&! trees! #!$%*!%*^&! boat! I hate you! *!$%£% sake!”
That’s me. I’ve hired the rowing boat for an hour and I’ve just crashed into it the reeds for the thirtieth time in forty minutes. It’s starting to get frustrating.
The last time I went out on a rowing boat was my AS results day, Thursday 15th August 2002. My mum phoned when we were finished, demanded to know where I was and yelled at me for not getting good enough results. Seventeen years on, who even knows what AS levels are? We went down to the quay in Wareham and the sailor in our little group of friends took up the oars. Pretty sure the rest of us were just passengers. Every time I’ve driven through Wareham for the last several years, I’ve thought about taking a boat out by myself and this morning I finally did it. I’ve been kayaking a few times lately, I’ve been paddleboarding. I can handle a paddle.
But a set of oars?
I’m right-handed and my right hand is very dominant. That makes my rowing uneven. Specifically, it means I’m mostly turning towards the right bank, which is on my left because you row backwards. The right bank is all trees and reeds, which is better than the left bank which is all moorings for smallish motorboats. If I achieved anything today, it was that I didn’t hit anyone’s boat. On the other hand, I got very well acquainted with the reeds.
The other problem with the oars, apart from that I pull more strongly on one than the other, is that they get caught in things. The reeds, a lot of the time. Because they’re locked into oarlocks, you can’t yank them out of the way of things in a hurry. If you’ve got a moment, you can pull them across in front of you but that’s only if you’ve got a moment and while a rowing boat might seem a slow and sedate and serene form of transport, the moment between “Oh, I’m going to crash into the reeds!” and actually being in the reeds isn’t long enough to haul the oars aboard. The other thing the oars catch is the water and then the boat thinks it’s got a rudder. You try to manouevre but you can’t get the oar into the air quick enough and then the boat suddenly does a handbrake turn while you’re still pulling ineffectually at the oar, shouting “move, you stupid thing!”
I did spend a few minutes rowing nicely down the river. But I spent 80% of it trying to dig myself out of the reeds. Swallows and Amazons it was not. Wacky Races meets Top Gear challenge, more like. Maybe I could be a passable oarsperson with some practice. When it got wider and the bends happened to match the uneven angle of my rowing, I moved quite easily and efficiently, especially when I realised I can make a longer stroke by moving my oars as far behind me as the oarlock will allow. Oh yes, I went. That’s probably another part of the problem; inability to go slowly and gently.
If you’re not battling the oars and the ceiling, it’s quite pleasant. A rowing boat is such a nice old fashioned summer pastime and it’s a nice river, although it gets a bit busy with people in kayaks, small motorboats and on paddleboards, many of them just as nautically-challenged as me. Those with paddles I mostly left to avoid me but I tried to dodge the little motorboats and if there’s one thing more inept than a polar bear in a rowing boat, it’s a grockle in a powerboat. I at least kept to the right as instructed, mostly because that’s where my dominant right hand kept sending me. But the little plastic powerboats don’t have the disadvantages my rowing boat has – uneven steering, blind & backwards, wide-reaching poles sticking out the side, powered only by arm strength. You should have no problem out-manoeuvring me.
The nice man who sent me on my “voyage up the Amazon” had said that alone and unburdened and with a vague idea how to row, I might reach the road bridge before I had to turn round. I didn’t. Nowhere near. Probably not even halfway. I spent most of my time fighting my way out of reeds and trees rather than nimbly whisking my little boat upstream.
Did I enjoy it? Honestly, at the time I didn’t. I found it deeply frustrated. But the moment I stepped onto dry land, or at least onto the slipway, I found myself giggling. And sure, my steering is terrible (hello week of fine motor control practice, left hand!) but I’m not the worst rower ever to exist. Didn’t hit anything that mattered, did I? Didn’t drown. Didn’t upset the swans and their baby, a notoriously short-tempered species. Got back on time. Giggled at the whole experience and immediately went to the quayside pub to post pictures on Twitter. Because I had an adventure. Captain Frost out.
