Cheating

Today was Harborfest. A friend asked me to join him in the mixed doubles rowing races, and we each participated in the men's and women's competition using his dinghy. Well, there was competition in the men’s race, at least. Although my friend was last over the starting line, he was way out in the front of the pack when crossing the finish line. Back in the day, I could outrow everyone in the harbor, male or female. But having been boatless for a while, and a landlubber to boot, I had my doubts. No worries; I only had two other women to race against.

In the second half of the race, I got silly and started rowing slowly, leisurely, toying with the idea of rowing in cirles. But I decided that would be too insulting to my competition, whom I could almost make out way off in the distance. Since I came in miles ahead, I was annoyed all over again that we had been segregated by sex. Then came the mixed doubles. As we got to the start, we could see dinghies equipped with two people and four oars, something we were thought was not allowed. Long before this weekend, we had been told that we had to sit side by side and each take an oar. My friend and I had never rowed together. We never got around to scheduling practice time. We assumed that we'd be so mismatched and out of sync that we'd be rowing in circles. We thought that we would end up either laughing so hard that we'd be adrift while our competetors passed us coming and going, or we would be sitting there whacking each with oars.

We did start off in last place. And we did get giggly. But, as we made the turn, getting used to each other's strokes, so to speak, we pulled ahead. And by the time we crossed the finish line, we were all alone out front! Granted, there was one couple, using four oars, who would have beaten us easily, except for that pesky dock that jumped out in front of their dinghy and stopped them cold as they were speeding along! By the time they got going again, we were giggling our way past them.

We swept all three competitions oars down. We suspect that the dinghy won't be allowed in next year's races!

Kudos to my friend, who built the dinghy himself. A fine show of craftmanship, indeed.