Going Coastal!
Bridget and Luke at World Coastal Rowing Championships
Written by Bridget Schodorf
It actually started out as a joke, that Luke Rein and myself would race the mixed double at Coastal Worlds, but when the opportunity arose we jumped on it. This year the Coastal World Championships took place in Oeiras, Portugal. Our teammate Christine Cavallo was already going to be there for Beach Sprints the week earlier, and we figured out that we didn’t need to trial our boat, like the Beach Sprints event, so it seemed like a no-brainer to go. We crunched all the numbers and realized for a week of international travel and racing it wasn’t going to cost us too much. So we booked our flight, Airbnb, rented our boat, got our Covid tests, and got all our paperwork for travel and were on our way.
Coastal rowing as well as Beach Sprints is a relatively new kind of rowing, especially compared to flat water rowing, and it isn’t our primary focus as far as what we are training for. This meant that it was going to be a trip we funded ourselves. It was also something we didn’t know much about, but getting to Portugal and being at the course we realized pretty much everyone was learning as they went. The events were filled with a range of athletes from ages 15 to 65, as well as a range of ability. Competing were Olympic medalists, club rowers, and rowers who only train for coastal rowing.
The race course.
We arrived on Monday, but didn’t get out to practice until Thursday as we were waiting for our Covid results to come back in order to be allowed to enter the course. Thursday was a scheduled practice day so we went out twice. Luke and I had rowed together a few times (3) in a racing shell back in Craftsbury to at least get some rowing in together, but Thursday was our first time in a Coastal boat out on the ocean. It was my first time ever doing coastal rowing and it was Luke’s second coastal regatta he’s gone to. And it was amazing! Bouncing over waves, being 1k out into the open ocean, trying to SURF the waves as you row, it was some of the most fun I’ve had rowing.
Friday was the first day of racing and we snuck out for another short practice between races. With not many practice opportunities we aimed to have short but efficient and concentrated rows on the things we felt would help us the most; practicing how to turn around each of the different buoys, how to row three-quarters slide basically the whole time but row even shorter when we wanted to surf the waves, very early arm/ body prep, most importantly how to get into the boat while dodging waves and how to land by rowing right up onto shore.
The boat staging for the start of the B final.
Saturday morning was our heat, and we almost missed it. The race was moved up 45 minutes and we didn’t know. Luckily we got there early enough to set our blade lengths, move some stuff around in the boat (because we shared all our equipment with other crews), get out on the water and row right up to the start. There were 17 other boats in our heat and from watching other racing we realized it was basically a race to the first buoy. If you could get cleanly around buoy 1 and be in the top 7 places you had a good shot of making it to the A final. We came around buoy one in 16th place, but Luke did an amazing job of steering (the whole regatta) and we avoided some crashing in front of us so we moved up there, and then from buoy 1 to 2 we really started moving. Then we passed another boat on the last buoy by taking the inside of the turn, which put us in 9th place. It was top 6 to the A final then the next fastest 7th place out of the heats, so we were in the B final but very proud of our first ever coastal race.
The B final was on Saturday morning. They changed the start so today's race we were doing a beach start and beach finish, rather than a mass water start like the day before and beach finish like Friday. This meant that the starter would call 2 minutes until start, we would put our boat in the water, they would call attention and we jumped in and rowed off. After a false start and starting the race over again we had a much better beach start and came around buoy 1 in 7th place, then 4th place around buoy 2 and finished 4th in the B final. Both days were beach finishes which meant we were rowing up right onto shore and Luke was jumping out of the boat and sprinting up through the finish line on the beach.
We were happy with how we finished, and how we executed both of our races! And are already planning on making that A final next year at the 2022 Coastal Worlds in Wales.