ROWING OUR WHITEHALL
My wife, Marcia, and I row our 17’ Whitehall Spirit at least once a week year around.
We live in Seattle, Washington where we trailer our boat, most often, to either Lake Union or Lake Washington.
Lake Union has about four miles of shoreline, so, on that lake, we might typically row 3 miles. Sometimes, if the wind is favorable, we also sail. We often row against a southerly wind and sail back to the boat ramp.
Lake Washington is about 20 miles long: good sailing, but we find the mix of industry and moorages on Lake Union more interesting than the redundant lakefront houses on Lake Washington.
We also frequently trailer our boat to salt water venues on Puget Sound and in the San Juan Islands. How frequently? Probably a dozen times a year.
We like to camp at campgrounds to which we tow the Whitehall with our Vanagon Westfalia.
Recently, the installation of a Subaru engine in the Vanagon made it particularly easy to trail the Whitehall to several large lakes in British Columbia, lakes about a nine hour drive from Seattle. The lakes are on the Nehaliston Plateau at an elevation of about 3,000 feet.
One of my logs for that trip reads: “Rowed/sailed 13 nm on Greenlake, 6.4 kts. max.” (To n.e. end of lake). The 6.4 kts was under sail, of course. A second time on Greenlake, there was absolutely no wind, so we rowed to the other end of the lake, about a six mile row. The wind came up very strong and we sailed back to the campground, a couple of times reaching or running at 6.6 knots. That was a perfect day on the water: rowing a good distance, then getting a “free” ride back.
Assuming no wind or current, Marcia and I row with ease at about 3 kts. I suppose that our very maximum rowing speed would be nearly 5 kts. (Interestingly, when we have a third rower, we don’t go much faster: probably the increased wetted surface.)
It is very nice to be able to take one or two friends in the boat. When we take two, the fourth person becomes the coxswain.
Sometimes he/she uses the tiller; sometimes just gives commands.
The point I want to make is that it is really good to have oars (two sets, two rowers) as well as a sail. We can go directions (up wind) under oars that it would take three times as long to get to as it would under sail. We get the exercise and get to intricate waters that would not be possible to sail in
We really don’t much like simply sailing back and forth. Doing so seems like what Garrison Keillor once called “mindless gerbil activity” (he was referring to jogging).
And sometimes we judge it unsafe to sail, so we take to the oars.
The British Columbia trip lasted a week and we rowed and sailed every day.
We don’t use sliding seats in our boat because we think that they would add a complication to the sailing rig.
I am 75 years old and Marcia is 61.
Bob Dunshee
sponsored by Whitehall Rowing and Sail
copyright 2005 Whitehall Reproductions Canada Ltd.