Perfect Timing (Part II)

Rowers:

The following excerpt from Mind Over Water by Craig Lambert echoes concepts that we have been discussing this season.

"In crews of two, four, or eight rowers, the sonorities [sounds] of our blades mingle with those of our crewmates. Naturally, more oars make more sounds and hence perhaps obscure the source of a given note. This is the nature of social life. A solo cellist can sound fine playing alone, provided the instrument's strings are in tune with one another. But to play a duet or with an orchestra, the cellist must first "tune up" with fellow musicians to forge a common reference point. In a single scull we tune no blades but our own. But on a crew, the goal is not perfection of the individual but of the team, and so we seek unity and harmony.

"Precise timing is essential: if eight oars strike the water even fractions of a second apart, they jerk the boat ahead unevenly, like cylinders misfiring in a V-8 engine. A rower whose blade enters the water even a fraction of a second late has momentarily reduced the crew from an eight to a seven. At the catch, the rowers strike their greatest blow against entropy, and whoever is late immediately becomes a form of ballast rather than a driving force: the shell is now surging ahead, and the late oar is going along for the ride. Imagine that eight men are about to lift a small automobile off the ground: each man hunkers down, grips the frame, and readies himself to lift up on the count of three. Whoever lifts a fraction of a second late may as well not be lifting at all; the task is already accomplished.

"Rhythm, a rocking rhythm, is crucial. In crews we listen to the tone and texture of catches and releases and also for the synchrony, a key element in speed. When strokes synchronize perfectly, the crew pulls in phase, like light waves in a laser beam, and, as with a laser, the energies reinforce each other and multiply. To the crew, an eight-oared boat in peak form feels rowed by a single oar, and in a sense it is. The rowers' unifying awareness has come to life, and the shell stirs with it."