alitloff

I went rowing yesterday for the first time in a year. Okay, I had paddled inflatable dinghies during that time, but deflatables are not real boats and therefore do not count. Yesterday I rowed an honest to goodness rowboat. Miraculously, all my troubles melted away with each stroke of the oars. How I had missed rowing! Life, which had already been steadily improving anyway, is now suddenly completely all better! I had such a great time rowing yesterday that I went back to do it again today, going much further.

Until I sold it last year, I had the same hard dinghy and the same set of oars for twelve years. The formula was simple. In up to 30 knots of wind, I could go places in the dinghy. Over 30 knots, I got blown away. During that ‘rowing decade’ I had been offered hundreds of tows from others in dinghies with outboards, and gotten almost as many surprised looks when I turned them all down. I lived to row. I often wondered if I went sailing simply to anchor the big boat and row around a new piece of water in the dinghy.

It’s not that I have anything personal against outboards. Most cruising folks I know have them. I have even sailed aboard several boats equipped with inflatables and outboards. All I can say is, if any landlubbers out there have the idea that cruising is all about lounging on tropical beaches, it’s not. It’s all about fixing the outboard. Over and over and over, until the sun goes down and the skeeters come out and you have to give up on that beach because you can’t get there; rowing an inflatable is like rowing an egg.

I’ll stick with my hassle free oars attached to a proper rowing dinghy any day of the week, leading me to think, that if I am this passionate about rowing, maybe I should save the aggravation, expense, and hard work of getting another cruising sailboat together and simply get a good rowing boat to row around the world!

This cruiser is trying to avoid the dead outboard

syndrome by carrying two at once.

HOWEVER,

That simply lead to two dead motors at once!

Pass the oars, please, I have to go rowing.