One must be adaptable.  My original plan was to do a long open water row this morning, but we decided to stay home instead of going to the cape this weekend.  So, I texted Joe and asked him if he wanted to do a long row in the double this morning at 6.

He was willing, so that was the plan.  The weather this morning was beautiful.  A bit chilly, in the upper 40s.  There was no wind when we arrived, but a light breeze picked up by the time we launched.  It was shifty, coming sometimes from the NE, sometimes from the SE, and sometimes it was non-existent.  This was mostly a cross wind.  It was sunny and clear and the water was nice and flat.

We took out the Wintech double that we bought from Saugatuck.  I really like the boat.  It’s easy to set and much lighter than the old Vespoli we had been rowing last year.

I didn’t have much of a plan, beyond 90 minutes of UT1.  We rowed to the south end of the lake.  That was mostly just us getting in sync and watching the scenery.  I stepped up the stroke rate over the last 1500m or so to spice things up.

Once we spun the boat, I asked if Joe was up for some easy rate ladders.  He was, and off we went.  The plan was 6 minute ladders.  3 minutes at r20, 2 minutes at r22, and 1 minute at r24.  Repeat until you run out of lake.

It took us 4 and half ladders to get to the north end of the lake.  I checked if we had the time and energy to go all the way back to the south end of the lake.  We did 🙂

Going back south, it took almost 5 complete ladders.  We got waked right at the end, which was a bummer.  By then we were getting short on time so we spun the boat and headed back north to the boat house.  We did two more ladders, which brought us to about 1k south of the bridge.  Joe said we should row past the docks since there was a crowd gathering for learn to row day.  The plan would be to row at r20 until we got to the bridge, and then I would bring the rate up to 28 or so and we would demonstrate the beauty and grace of our rowing to assembled throng.

That was the plan.  I’m not sure how beautiful or graceful it was, but there was a lot of water in the footwell and Joe looked very wet by the time we finished.  :-O  I guess I really need work on my catches to reduce my backsplash!

After that we helped out with our humble part of National Learn To Row Day.  We had a couple dozen folks show up.  So we taught the basics of the stroke on a dozen ergs, got the to sign away all their rights, and then took them out in a couple of eights for a quick row.

All in all, a fantastic morning.

Tomorrow:  rest day.