anna's adventures
by ANNA HARTLEY
SCULL SET
This month, Anna gets to grips with an oarsome activity – rowing.
has been had. About three hours to be precise. The day earlier, Guildford Grammar's boat shed manager Josh Wilkes ran me through the basics. In a single scull, I learned to rotate the oars at the correct moment so they are either parallel to the water (feathered) or perpendicular (squared) and move my body forward and back in perfect sequence (legs - torso - arms, then arms - torso - legs). It sounds simple doesn’t it? It’s not. There is an awful lot to remember and when I get one thing right, something else goes out the window. I ‘bum shoot’, get out of sequence, over-rotate my wrists, dig my oars in too deep or miss the water altogether and even manage to get the oar behind me jabbing into my kidneys. Josh is patient and encouraging, but I’m glad there are few witnesses to my early attempts. Even when I do eventually coordinate enough to move through the water, I’m ungainly and have no spare attention to look where I’m going. Luckily, the kayaker zooming past gives me a wide birth. I come to appreciate why my dad has spent so much time over the last 25 years coaching here.
ROW! Dad roars and the river explodes into a frenzy of activity. Oars flash in and out of the water and in a blink they are gone. I can’t believe how fast they are moving. THE WATER, OILY and soft in the early morning light, bulges up slightly just before the blade of the oar breaks the surface. As it sweeps up and back, droplets rain back down into the Swan River. I focus on keeping my oar level and look towards the backs of the six rowers in front of me, who make up the Guildford Grammar School 2nd VIII.
18
PRIMOLIFE | may 15
It’s 6.30am and we have already been on the water for an hour. Rowing with these guys, elite schoolboy athletes, is a pretty rapid promotion for me, considering I only learned to row yesterday, but thanks to the fact that my dad is their coach, I’ve been allowed to take a spot in their shell for the morning. I haven’t just got onto the water willynilly though, some training and preparation
As he puts it “you can learn 95 per cent of rowing in the first day, but that last 5 per cent will take the rest of your life”. Back on dry land, dad puts me in a training tank to learn how to row ‘sweep’, that is, with a single oar. Feeling a bit like a slave in a galley, I practice drawing the oar through the water, and to my delight, find it much easier than