Boathouse, Camera Crews, AGM, Parking, Henley, new Rowing BC ED, Hoses

First of all: I forgot to include a table of contents in the last episode: sorry about that. I was checking spelling and there is only room for a few things in my head at once.

69%

For whatever reason, the last newsletter was opened by 69% of the people that received it, which is I believe a bit of a record: especially as there are nearly 350 people on the list itself without even getting into the social media thing. So thank you for improving my sense of self worth!

New Boathouse

Hopefully that got your attention. The City of Vancouver is collecting feedback for input into the Capital Plan for the coming 4 years. If you were hoping that they would be including funding for: additional capacity at the Creekside Community Centre by Science World, replacement docks and infrastructure in Alder Bay that would support rowing from there or infrastructure at Vanier Park, such as changing rooms, showers, workout areas, an inexpensive cafe, a place to study and so on, this is your chance! Could you please complete the survey Sunday May 22: https://shapeyourcity.ca/park-board-capital-plan. Ideally I would have received that email earlier, but there is much to be done in the world.

Camera Crews

On Tuesday May 24th at 3 pm there will be a presentation being filmed down at our compound. If you happen to be passing by, it would be good to see you. If you are down there before that, perhaps you could make it look pretty for the video and pictures. Let's hope that the honey wagon won't be visiting the Bard on the Beach like there were on Friday for the advance party.

AGM

Parking at Vanier Park

A permit is available for purchase directly on the EasyPark website. Once logged in please select the "Get Permits" option located under the "Permits" tab. Here you will see a list of lots available for monthly parking. The seasonal permit for Lot 71 is $185.00 and is valid from April 1st 2022 – September 30th 2022.
https://easypark.t2hosted.ca/cmn/auth.aspx

Henley

So... I think between our coaches, members past & present and various hangers on, we should have about 12ish people at the Henley Royal Regatta this year. That's up from 1 last year. A pretty awesome 1, mind you. Our coaches: Caitlin, Sally and Aidan plan to be rowing there in entries through UBC so they will be away for several weeks from mid June to mid July.

And if you are going to Henley: don't forget your boat and wear appropriate clothing - new this year: ladies may wear trousers!

New Rowing BC Executive Director

Rowing BC is excited to announce the appointment of Alia Zawacki as its incoming Executive Director, effective August 1, 2022.

I don't think I know Alia: however she's originally from Saskatchewan, and they generally grow them up pretty good there. I am looking forward to someone who is an educator and can help us move forward... rowing has been a successful sport in BC thanks to VRC, UBC and a large number of clubs over the past 100+ years from Nelson to Brentwood to UVic. To the point where we frequently got up on the podium in terms of success in competition, and have never had to get down and play nicely with others. Between Safe Sport, the new Centre in Langford and creating opportunities for us all, I suspect there are lots of ways that Alia can help us work with other sports, and learn from the success and failures of others (and our own) to improve our community.

David Calder

And that means that after almost 5 years as the ED of Rowing BC, David Calder is getting to go live his dream job at Brentwood College. No more dealing with rowing club drama that he didn't start, navigating pandemics, trying to figure out moving forward in a complicated world of competing interests or putting up with my hare brained ideas. Thank you for being here for us David, and looking up in a time when a lot of us were looking down. We all know that Sonja does all the actual work :) but your part has been instrumental in making a vision for rowing in BC. I see the tell tale signs of what you put into it in keeping us all safe, being the host of the NRC's, and making rowing an important part of the BC Summer Games. No doubt we'll be in touch over implementing those plans for celebrating Herb Challier's life at some point [link unavailable].

Hoses that reach the dock.

Thanks to Don, we now have a 300' hose that will reach from the tap where VC washes their boats to the end of the dock so we can get rid of the goose goodness. I had put a splitter and a quick release connector on the tap so we could quickly connect it, but some power boater stole it within 2 days. Guess what I said.

Politics

I've been thinking about the world, and all the stuff that's going on at the moment from Monkey Pox (at least I'm old enough to have had a smallpox vaccine) to Ukraine, to people on Twitter. Do I have opinions? Yes. Are they worth mentioning here? It's not going to help. We are trying to build a community on our values. I bump into politicians of various stripes from time to time, and while I might agree or disagree with their specific decisions, I do appreciate the ones who are trying to create and build rather than the ones who fight against the truth.

Bard on the Beach

Hmmm. If people are interested in going to see what the neighbours are up to as a group: perhaps they might want to mention it in Slack https://bardonthebeach.org/. We could all use some culture.

City of Burnaby's Support for Rowing

Burnaby has just voted to spend $1.4 million to rejuvenate the grandstand area out at Burnaby Lake. This was after spending several hundred thousand on new docks. I look forward to hearing from the City of Vancouver about our own version of the Evergreen Suez Crisis. Certainly it would be interesting to know their plans for clearing the acknowledged False Creek navigation channel of anchored vessels. There are enough gaps in the wall of boats to row carefully through them, but certainly not enough to host an event. It would seem odd to determine the City of Vancouver Rowing Champion at an event on Burnaby Lake on Sunday October 30th, but we will see what happens next.

Meanwhile, I have spent several hours in meetings over the past couple of years with Vancouver's OnWater Strategy group discussing topics such where should people launch Stand Up Paddleboards. Which, as it turns out, is where they have always launched (although the Vanier docks where a lot of people launch their SUP's from seems to be missing from the discussion). Hopefully we can discuss the navigation channel and rowing & paddling trailer storage at the next meeting.

Cascadia

The Cascadia Regatta is to be held back at the Delta Deas Rowing Club on the 15th to the 17th of July this year... Last time it was there, it became home to FCRC's first medals - by Gene and Ola several years back. The regatta package is here. If you don't remember Gene: she used to own the Whitecap 1x, and sent us this St Patrick's Day card a few months ago:

In my defense, the mail took a long time and then I left the card in the car for a while. Oops. Sorry about that Gene...

Coastal Quad Purchase

For a little more than a year we have had the use of a Coastal Quad owned by the Salish Sea Coastal Rowing Club (thank you Rowing BC for arranging that). I met with Jolene, their president, today to hand over a cheque to purchase it formally from them. It was well priced, and part of the deal to support that price is that they get the use of it from time to time, subject to our needs and such. So, now that the weather is nice (well, today at least) perhaps it'll see more action by our members and theirs as a result.
It's been hugely important for us in terms of Community Rowing programming and has helped create conversations with the other watersport folks beside us.

I would say that the most important piece of equipment is the rudder: the company that made it went out of business and the company that bought the molds for the boats can't make new rudders for no reason I can discern. They seem to have built a very French business model: "non." Please make sure that the rudder isn't in place when you launch it, or when you are in shallow water. Our options for purchasing Eurodiffusions rudders are limited if it is damaged.

Rowing Internationally

Rowing at an international event this year such as the World Rowing Masters Regatta, or say: Henley Royal? Our RCA insurance policy will not normally extend to regattas sanctioned outside Canada or regattas registered with US Rowing. This includes Henley Royal, World Masters Games, World Rowing Masters Regattas. If you want to row in those, or other international events, and have the RCA insurance policy extend their policy to that event, you must request (in advance) to have those regattas recognized by Rowing Canada Aviron. I suspect they need to be run in a fashion consistent with Canadian sanctioned regattas for RCA to extend to them. So while the Olympics and World Cup events might be an easy sell, the Regatta D'Abbatoir in Dodgyville, Europe might not be that place.

Boy In The Boat

So apparently George Clooney is a director for the movie version of the book Boys In The Boat and visited the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race crews to understand this rowing business. He's here with the Oxford bunch. They've been filming at the Upper Thames Rowing Club which is on the Henley Course in the UK, and incidentally is the club that our member Rebecca used to row at. I'm not sure why they didn't film at the original UW boathouse, where more recently the Conibear Rowing Club used to row from (I think?). Perhaps the Space Needle throws off that sense of history. Especially as it's painted orange at the moment for it's 60th birthday.

FCRC Update: May 21st, 2022.

69%