Weather:  It was nice until I decided to go rowing.  I didn’t go first thing in the morning since the tide was low.  (It’s tough to launch at low tide because there are extensive sand flats all around the island.  High tide was at 2:40pm.  I launched about 12:45.  As I walked over the dune to the beach, I noticed there was a bit more wind.  It turns out it continued to freshen through the row.  It turned out to be quite an adventure.

I turned north and headed up to Wellfleet Harbor.  I actually headed somewhat NW, into the wind and waves until I was past the north point of the island.  Then I headed more northeasterly with the wind and waves on my stern quarter.  It was only 500m or so, but it felt longer in the boat.  Then I lined up a course to take me to the end of the wellfleet harbor breakwater.  The wind felt like it was on my port bow quarter, and this was actually a reasonable course with the building waves.  At this point they were probably 12″ or so and quite unpredictable.  I’d get a couple big ones, and then a few minutes with much smaller ones.  I enjoyed this part of the row a lot, but not as much as when I turned the corner after the breakwater.  I turned east.  The wind was close to dead astern, and the breakwater took care of the chop.  There was a longer period swell that seemed to bend around the end of the breakwater and I was surfing down the face of these waves.  This was a blast.

It all came to an end when I turned around at the east end of the harbor.  All of the sudden the wind that was diminished by me going in the same direction, was right on the bow.  Going into the harbor, I was rowing 2:30-2:40 splits, coming back out, I was lucky to get below 3:30.  Even on smooth water, this was hard work.  As I came out past the end of the breakwater, and hit the waves that built up across the broad fetch over to the great split, it got even rougher.  My original thought had been to cross over to Chequesset Neck and then row down the great spit, which would have been somewhat sheltered  from the waves, then I would cross back over to the island at  the south end of the spit.   That plan did not last too long.  I bashed my way against the waves and the wind for a few minutes and then decided that I had had enough.  I turned for home and tried to navigate with the waves a little bit forward of my beam.

This was easier, but still a lot of work.  I would go through sections where the water was reasonably flat and I would get some good strokes in, then I would slam into some bigger waves and completely fill the cockpit with water.  The bailer couldn’t keep pace with the all the water that was coming in.  At this point the waves were 12 to 18″ and I was struggling with the conditions.  The worst was the last 1000m.  This part was over the shallow Lt Island shoal that extends out from the island.  The waves were much bigger here and most of them were breaking.  I just tried to pick my way through them.  You can see my HR went down a lot in this section.

You can’t really see just how slow I was going when I turned around into the waves on the summary chart.

So, here it is in isolation.

I am trying to construct what happened when.  I used Google earth, which can show telemetry along the mapped route to figure it out.

A.  Decide to head straight up to Wellfleet instead of heading over to Indian neck since the waves were building.

B. Turn behind the breakwater.  The next chunk was fun.

C.  Turn around to row back into the wind.

D.  Get slammed around enough that I decide to head straight home instead of heading for Great Spit.

E.  Huge waves stop me dead and fill up the whole cockpit, even the seat deck was under water.  Noticed that the self bailer was a bit fouled, cleaned it out and continued.

F.  Get to the shoals around the island and the waves start breaking.  Pick my way between them back to the beach.

Even though it was hard work, and frankly a little scary at times, I enjoyed it and I think it provided some useful rough water practice.  I feel pretty confident about what the boat will do in these circumstances and I’m getting the hang of working with the waves.

It was also a pretty good workout.

I noticed a couple of interesting quirks in the telemetry.

First, the algorithm that NK is using to detect strokes doesn’t work as well as RIM when you are going slowly and getting slammed by big waves.  In the comparison plot below the RIM data is blue and the NK data is red.  The total stroke count on the NK was way off too.  I was counting strokes and NK was over counting by about 5 strokes per hundred.

Second, there is a mismatch in total logged distance.  In the first half of the row, with less wave action, they match up well, but as soon as I was pounding into the waves, RIM started to give me credit for more distance than NK.  One idea is that RIM might be measuring distance in 3 dimensions and NK is measuring in 2?  But by the end, it was a difference of about 500m

When I got back to the beach, enough water had leaked into the bow of the boat that I could not lift it.  I had to flip it over and let it drain for 5 minutes before I could carry it to the car.  I think I found where the leak is.  There is a crack in the bulkhead between the seat deck and the cockpit bottom.  Whenever the cockpit gets full, water can drain into the bow.  Since the cockpit was basically full the second half of the outing, the boat must have been half swamped by the time I was back to the island.  No wonder it felt so sluggish.

Next weekend, I think I need to do some fiberglass work!

I was not expecting to be able to get out on the water this early in the season, but I lucked out to day.  It was sunny, and the temp was in the mid sixties.  Water temperature was around 45F, but it felt warmer than that.  There was a bit more wind than I would have liked, but not nearly as much as we had yesterday.

Here’s the weather data from my house for today.

I launched right before 1pm, so the wind was building during my row.  This caused waves between 8″ and 12″.  This is big enough to present some steering challenges but not big enough to make it unpleasant.  There were a few scattered white caps.  Just to give you an idea of what it was like yesterday, here’s the weather data.  We had gusts up to 65mph over night on Saturday night and Sunday night.

But thankfully, by the time Monday rolled around, it was much calmer.  I launched from the little beach a couple minutes away from my house, and rowed north up to wellfleet harbor.  This was splashy and slow into the wind and waves, but it was quite nice to be out on the water again.  On the expanse of the bay, my boat feels very small, especially when the waves build.   I finally made it to the breakwater of the onner harbor and turned.  Although the wind was from the north, it hooked around a bit and when I rowed to the east into the inner harbor, I was going with the wind and the waves.  This was some of the fastest splits I saw of the day.  I rowed up past the end of the town jetty and turned around into the wind and the tide to slog out of the harbor.  Once I passed the breakwater, I turned south and had the wind on my starboard stern quarter.  This was a tough angle to maintain.  The waves tried hard to push me to starboard and I had to maintain much heavier pressure on that side to stay straight.

Ultimately, I got the hang of getting my point and timing my strokes to surf the waves.  I would end up off course, but could swing back and repeat the cycle.  It was pretty fun and the time flew by on the way back to the island.  I rowed in front of my house back to the beach and landed there.

One bad thing, there must have been about a gallon of water in the boat.  I really have to get it fixed if I’m going to use it in the Blackburn.

Sad but true.  I go slowly enough in my Alden star so that the pace doesn’t show up right in the plots.  You can see I was pushing hard enough so it was a good aerobic workout.  I was also trying to keep my rowing reasonably light by aiming at a stroke rate of 20.

Here’s a better view of the pace.  The first 2500 meters were into the wind and 8″ to 12″ waves.  The section from 2500 to 4000 was still into the wind, but I was approaching the north shore of the harbor and the waves were smaller.  I think I was also getting a bit more help from the incoming tide.  Around 4000m was where I turned into the harbor and I was rowing with the wind, tide and waves.  It was fast and fun. 5000 to 6200 was right into the teeth of the wind and against the tide.  Fortunately not much wave action.

Then from 6200m to the end I was rowing downwind with the waves on my stern quarter.  The pace variations were basically dependent upon the size of the waves and whether or not I was getting swamped.  That happened a lot.  You can see from the HR that I was holding a pretty consistent level of pressure.

All in all an unexpected treat being able to get a row in this time of year.