by Becky Olinger

From becky

On September 8, 2013, Ruth Lindner, Teresa McCanlies, Becky Olinger, Regine Urbach and Lissa Wolfe towed the Notorious GIG to Peekskill, NY for the annual NY Watertrail Association Paddle for a Cure. This was an 11 mile “poker paddle” to benefit breast cancer research. It was supposed to be an easy trip, with the flood tide, up to Cold Spring, NY. (Last year we did it with only 3 rowers from Cold Spring to Peekskill and it was no problem.) Well, it turned out there was a wicked wind from the north and we struggled all the way. But we made it, with the help of Dave Hardy from Building Bridges Building Boats, who led his gig and ours to the opposite side of the Hudson, which was more sheltered from the wind, and one of his young, strong, high school students as an extra rower. And we had the winning poker hand!

From Downloads

by Deborah Clearman

From 2013-09-27

So maybe I was a little desperate. I’d recently left my dream job. A knee injury forced me to give up the thrice-weekly jogging habit that got me outdoors and maintained my tenuous grasp on mental health. My life was full of holes—a sinking ship. Running past Pier 40 on the Hudson I’d often noticed a sign for FREE ROWING.

I’d seen those lunatics in rowboats and kayaks bouncing around in the middle of the harbor as speedboats, water taxis, Circle Lines, jet skis, tankers, tugs, ocean liners, fireboats, and the Beast roared by. They looked like toddlers on tricycles playing on the Jersey Turnpike. Nevertheless, I decided to give rowing a try.

I showed up on a Sunday at noon for my first Community Row. At orientation inside the Boathouse I lifted a 9-foot oar—surprisingly light—and felt the planks of a Whitehall gig—surprisingly thin. I signed a waiver (gulp!), donned a life jacket (whew!), and went outside where the bright sun of a beautiful September afternoon sparkled on the river.

The first step to rowing, it turned out, was a complicated process of lowering a 25-foot wooden boat fifteen feet down from the pier to the water. By the time the crew was assembled in the gig, my pin and ring set, my oar tossed, I felt I’d already received an advanced degree in nautical language. We pulled away from the pier and took a turn around the “cove,” the protected water between the hulking mass of Pier 40 (gently crumbling into the river) and the iconic ventilation stack of the Holland Tunnel.

Having mastered the basics of port and starboard, hold water and stroke, Coxswain Frank gave a blast on his horn and we headed out across the river. I bent my back and heaved at my oar, breathing hard, heart pounding, to keep in time with the stroke. I was the only member of the crew over sixty. The others were random German and American tourists, all strapping and athletic looking and under thirty. “Can I do this?” I thought.

Bounding over wakes and waves, Frank steered us straight for New Jersey, just daring the traffic in the shipping lanes to get between us and our goal. I felt the power of the wind and tide, great forces of nature sweeping through the heart of megalopolis. Twenty minutes later we pulled into a cove in Jersey City to rest. “I can do this forever!” I thought, flooded with exhilaration.

That was a year ago. I’ve been back every Sunday I could since then. I’ve made a new community of friends— the volunteers who keep Village Community Boathouse going.
In Community Rows I’ve met people from 14 to 80— a young African- American woman from the Bronx studying to be a fire fighter, a Russian computer tech, an official photographer for the NYC Sanitation Department, a group of Asian alumni from a high school in Brooklyn, waiters, actors, nurses, college professors, yoga instructors, retirees, people passing through, native New Yorkers, people who have never rowed and others who’ve been around boats all their lives. Some try it once. Others like me get hooked. In the spring I trained to become a coxswain so that I can help spread the joy of rowing to anyone who shows up at Pier 40 with a spirit of adventure and maybe a bit of a hole in their life.

From 2013-09-27

From Arrogance of Self Righteousness Row 3013

Fourteen rowers from Village Community Boathouse traveled from New York City to Warren where they joined forces with Don Betts and some Warren Whirleygigs for the Fourth Annual Arrogance of Self-righteousness Row. The thirty mile row is a reenactment of a voyage by Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, who in 1670 at the age of 70 rowed in an open boat from Providence to Newport to engage some Quakers in a debate about religion.(See below for details.)

Two six-oared rowing gigs completed the voyage: Cady, belonging to Don Betts and Voyager, loaned by Ben Booth of Dharmavoager.org. Voyager is outfitted with sliding seats, providing a new experience for the VCB crew. Don Bett’s Cat Boat served as a chase boat.

Following a sliding seat demonstration by Ben Booth, the gigs set off from India Point down the Providence River on August 3rd with the ebb tide at about 8:30 AM. The row was uneventful and the gigs landed on Prudence Island at about 12:30 PM. They set off the next morning for Newport at about 8:00 AM and landed in Jamestown before noon. The crew spent the rest of the day exploring a group of islands called The Dumplings and a house, Clingstone built in 1905, perched atop a small dumpling, near Jamestown. Then the fleet crashed the Newport Jazz Festival and toured Newport Harbor before landing to catch the RIPTA bus to Providence for the trip back to NYC.

From Arrogance of Self Righteousness Row 3013

Rowers: Joe Fung, Brian Tong, Dexter Tong, Junze He, Kristina Pan, Eric Cerny, Anna Juchnicki, Haymar Lim, Shana Luo, Daryl Sew, Marcus Chan, Chaerin Jun, Fabian Czerwinski, Elisa Steinfurth, Linda Remington, Mary Betts, Riley
Chase Boat: Don Betts, Sally Curtis, Dave Clayton

Back Story
by Don Betts

Roger Williams (1603 -1683) was an American Protestant theologian, and the first American proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. He was a student of Indian languages and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans. Roger Williams made himself not welcome just about everywhere he went
except among the natives but in the founding of Rhode Island the important thing to keep in mind is that he got off on arguing religion and making sure that religion was kept out of politics. Newport and Providence or Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, or the term popular in the mid 1600s was Rouges Island, were exceptions in New England in that people were not jailed or maimed or excecuted or run off for their religion or lack of it. Williams had left England because of the mixing of the royalty and the church that changed back and forth between pope and non pope ideas depending on who lost their heads.

Arriving in Boston the people there were happy at first to welcome a young recent college graduate minister. He moved on to Salem then south to Plymouth and then back to Boston and maybe Salem again. At each place they got tired of him trying to separate church and state so he left for East Providence late fall but that was still part of the Massachusetts colony so he crossed the river to Providence and spent the winter with the natives there who were more
hospitable to guests than those of European background. He wrote a book, “A Key to the Language of America” about the Indian language and culture published in London in 1643. Then about 1670 or so George Fox came to the other end of the bay, so the rowing and digging start.
George Fox (July 1624 – 13 January 1691), the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. visited New England in 1672. Being more discreet than others of his sect, he went only to Rhode Island, avoiding Connecticut and Massachusetts. Roger Williams, who denied the pretensions to spiritual enlightenment, challenged Fox to disputation. Before the challenge was received, Fox had departed,but three of his disciples at Newport accepted it. Williams went there in an open boat, 30 miles from Providence, and, though over seventy years of age, rowed the vessel himself. After his 18 hour row to Newport he spent three days, Saturday Monday and Tuesday but not Sunday debating with three Quakers. Williams Wrote to George and George’s assistant or cohort Mr. Burrowes the 14 points about “Digging the Fox out of his Burrowes”. an account of the three days’ disputation, which at times was a tumultuous quarrel; to which Fox replied in a pamphlet entitled, “A New England Firebrand Quenched” and “The Arrogance of Self Rightousness”. Neither was sparing in sharp epithets..
From what I’ve read of these things the titles are the best part.