The wave peaks sharply, the sculler strokes furiously on the blades as the canary-yellow Kanghua sprint boat, lifts and starts to catch the swell.
But it’s too late, and despite expert gesticulating of support of the coach and boathandlers on the beach, the stern rises fast, the bow rapidly gathers speed. But the water rushing up reaches a critical mass on the front tip, and — whoops! — the sizeable 30kg boat broaches. The rower digs in frantically with the blade, essentially tramping the brakes.
Bounce, jounce, it’s amazing but the open water rower and that special boat stay upright as they get shoved over the sandbar and the shorebreak dissipates.
This was Orient Beach on Monday, when open water swimmers gawped at new open water critters in the sea doing unusual stuff in their backyard.
The rowers even had their own buoys. This was the arrival of the young crew of Olympic aspirants in the 2024-recognised sport of coastal rowing beach sprints.
Coach Bill Godfrey explains that the Olympic committee had demanded more for the public to enjoy than a straight-up rowing sprint at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
On Saturday and Sunday’s final SA coastal rowing series at Orient Beach, where the SA team will be selected to compete in big events this year, more than 100 athletes are signed up. The beach sprint regatta starts at 7.30am each day.
On Monday, the squad of super-fit ocean athletes are busy with a four-hour training day.
They must practice starting with the sprint, 50m from the shore edge.
At the drop of the red flag, solo rowers or doubles, run full bore to their boats being held in the shallows by their teammates. They must leap in, slot their feet into the most expensive Croc-type looking shoes ever, which expand and shut according to feet size, and grip their blades held in place by a potent looking v-shaped aluminum wing rigger.
With their backs facing the oncoming surf, they must haul off. But there is more. They have to manoeuvre their craft around three markers buried in the sand, two in the surf impact zone — where the lips of the waves tower and finally unleash, often in a round, tubular cylinder of power.
This is mayhem for these hardy scullers to negotiate, but surf boat action has always been a huge adventure, except that now the big wooden boats have been replaced with these slick R90,000 carbon, epoxy and aluminium super-surf crafts built to be tough and flexible.
Once the rower is beyond the backline of the breaking surf, there is a helter-skelter dash to a turn-around buoy 250m off the beach where opponents’ blades clatter and clash like swords in a duel, and then it’s back through the surf and to the beach for a sprint back to the start of the course.
There is an unusual aspect where rowers who face the beach as they haul out into the ocean and are directed by teammates’ arms shooting up and sideways communicating with their rower. It looks frantic, fast and a lot of fun.
Edward Godfrey, 23, an old Selbornian and Eastern Cape champion rower, says our city is the national base this week for the 20-strong SA squad and the expensive boats are stored here.
It’s also where his parents, coach Bill and mom Kate, who is president of SA Coastal Rowing, live on an off-the-grid smallholding and where most, if not all the squad are billeted.
Between a quick-paced training session, he rattles off two global events they want to take part in — the world finals in Turkey on November 6 and Commonwealth Championships in Barbados on November 21.
Bill says coastal rowing is blossoming in 50 countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the US but especially in Europe and the Mediterranean.
He says the mission of the squad this weekend is to make the SA team qualifying times.
The beach sprint format, unlike open ocean endurance races, takes place in surf no bigger than a metre and tomorrow’s 5m open ocean storm swell wrapping in around the Western Wall will be an interesting test for the squad.
On the shoreline where they are directing like hand-signaling jet marshalls, are three young women.
Frances Hill, 25, who is studying for a masters in marine biology at UCT, says this is “the trail running of rowing”.
Isabella Bruce, 20, loves the entire experience, saying: “It’s like transitioning from ballet to motocross”.
She describes being in the boat facing a rising swell and not being able to see what is happening at the nose. “You feel the wave, and make the call.”
When it goes pear-shaped, it can be bad. If the boat nose-dives, the wave will send the stern high into the sky catapulting the rower into the water. And then the boat, blades flying, can come down on them.
That is a calculated risk, and another is the mad dash to buoy where blades can “cross” — clatter into each other.
And yet, says Bill, “the camaraderie is like nothing I have ever experienced”.
