“Better to row and sink than never to row at all.”

The following post was contributed by Liz, a PBC senior member and a member of its Open Sculling Program.  Liz was invited to race in the 2008 Tour du Leman, along with fellow PBC’ers MJ and Bill G.

The Tour is a 160 kilometer (100-mile) non-stop race around Lac de Géneve in Switzerland. Our PBC rowers were joined by Ryan G. and Osval A. of Thompsons Boat Center, and together, they made up one of only five mixed crews in the race and the only crew from the United States.

Reprinted in its entirety, the original was sent to friends and supporters of Liz’s team following the race in Geneva in September 2008.  Liz was kind enough to let us share it with you again here, despite the outcome!

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Some of you may have heard by now that our race this weekend in Geneva did not go according to plan. Nor did it take as long as we had expected it to, for we were swamped and down for the count within the first hour of the race. Yes, it’s true: despite a great deal of sound logistical preparation (not to mention training), the strong NE wind prevailed. We did a lot of things right but met with a couple of unfortunate events that made us more vulnerable when bad luck hit.

Below is my account of how things went down. Apologies in advance for a long email. If any of you are especially brave, I have also attached some emails sent to a handful of DC rowers throughout the weekend by our teammate and team scribe, Ryan. Some of you received these, but many of you have not. His accounts are quite accurate and provide some color for you of the excitement before, the drama during, and the heartbreak after our ill-fated attempt.

Here we go.

The wind and water were horrible as we left the dock. We were well-prepared, though, and had gotten a great deal of useful advice from our competitors as well as competitors from previous years, including Tom Dryer and Bob Miller, who competed in 2005 as the first US team to race in the event. They came in 2nd that year, setting the record in the Masters category along the way.

Shortly after we turned around the first buoy (800 meters from the start), we were in about 4th place when Bill’s foot stretchers popped out. This forced him to drop out to fix them, and slowed us considerably. As waves washed over the gunwhales, Ryan tried to bail, but our handpump was totally overpowered. MJ also dropped out to help bail, and Ozzie and I kept rowing, but I knew this was not good. Not only were we going slower, but slower moving boats tend to sit lower in the water. Water was pooling in the stern, in part because the three stern-most people had stopped moving (to bail) and in part because the stern was heavier than the bow to begin with. Once water started to pool, incoming water kept rushing to the stern, making the imbalance even worse. To be honest, I had no idea how bad it was because I was in the bow and could only see about two inches of water in the boat beneath me (in contrast to 12-16 inches in the stern). In fact, when MJ asked for my knife to cut a water bottle to bail more effectively, I thought to myself, we can’t do that! We’ll need that water to drink in a few hours…” I was pretty oblivious.

Finally, we all had to stop to bail. This was a bad sign. We weren’t moving anywhere, so we weren’t getting any closer to good water (which turns out to have been more than 20 KM away). We were also sitting extremely low in the water. During this time, a number of boats had passed us, including an all-women’s crew who, we later recalled, were sitting very high in the water. They probably had an average weight of 120 lbs. This helped them for awhile, but 90 minutes into the race, two consecutive waves did them in. They’d made it for awhile, but their time had come too.

What finally did us in, though, was a safety launch that zoomed up next to us and threw out an enormous wake. In one rolling wave, all of our good bailing work had been zeroed. Ryan yelled furiously, but too little too late: Ryan, Bill and MJ were sitting in water. “It’s over,” said Ryan quietly.

It’s hard to describe what I felt in that moment. My gunwhales still above water, I could see everyone going down in front of me. Is this really happening? This is not what we came to Geneva to do. There’s got to be a way to keep rowing. I also thought, wow, we’re idiots. How could we have made so many stupid mistakes to allow this to happen? Everyone must be laughing at the dumb Americans who had no idea what they were doing.

For a few minutes, I thought we might have a chance. It didn’t occur to me (us) that by accepting help from the safety launch, we were disqualifying ourselves. We asked the officials several times if we could keep going but got no response. I think they couldn’t bear to break the news to us, and figured that we’d realize we were done soon enough. Ozzie, Bill, and Ryan were pulled in to the safety launch and wrapped in space blankets. It was really cold out, and everyone was shivering. MJ and I spent a good 15-20 minutes in the water after that.

Nobody knew what to do. I ended up taking charge, orchestrating a group effort to pull the shell alongside the launch, flip it over guts up (it had flipped once we got out of it), and pull/lift the boat out of the water to drain as much water as possible. At this point, we secured the boat to the launch, and MJ and I climbed aboard. I was pretty charged with adrenaline and wasn’t too cold. Frankly, I think being in the water was warming than being in the boat. Bill and Ryan were shivering uncontrollably. At that point, MJ said, Liz, I think we’re done. I think we all knew it, but at that point we agreed. It was over. How disappointing.

It is ironic that our rescue boat delivered the wake that did us in. To be honest, though, if that wake hadn’t come along, it is highly likely another wave would have delivered the final blow. Overall, the rescue effort was impressive. 80 athletes had to abandon the race and almost all of them spent some time swimming in Lac Leman. Nobody was injured. In addition to the safety launches chaperoning the athletes, there was a yacht dedicated to every shell in the race equipped with safety equipment, a radio, and a doctor on board. Had we finished the race, our yacht would have followed behind us for the duration. The race could not have happened safely without such a dedicated and serious safety team.

We were brought to the nearest shore, where to my surprise, two boats were waiting, having rowed to shore of their own accord rather than sinking. To this point, I had thought that we must have done some incredibly stupid things to bring this about. With some sheepishness, I must admit great relief after realizing we weren’t the only boat to succumb to the conditions. Even more amazing, I could not believe that some crews had elected to abandon the race on their own. Maybe they weren’t taking it as seriously as we? Maybe it was less important to them because they hadn’t traveled so far? Many of these crews had raced this before, and were from the UK and Germany. Easy enough for them to come back next year… While we hadn’t come to Geneva to become swamped in the first hour, we certainly hadn’t come to row back to shore when we saw how bad the conditions were.

We were taken back to SNG. The boat arrived on a trailer several hours later. We took hot showers and were fed hot soup in the club (which is more of a country club than a DC boathouse). By the time we arrived at the boathouse, seven crews of 21 were out. By the time we left the boathouse an hour later, there were only six crews left. (The sixth crew was disqualified many hours later after missing a mandatory time cut-off).

One of the first crews to sink, even before us, was a crew of 20-something Germans who had all been on the U23 German national team. They had come in 2nd the year before, and had also issued a challenge the night before to the reigning champs. They were fantastic rowers, they had prepared their craft well, and they had gone down within the first mile.

One of my other favorite failure stories was of another German crew. They had two electronic bilge pumps, each of which could pump 150 Liters/minute (that’s 18,000 liters/hour). They got a couple of waves back to back and were done. Unbelievable. As Ryan recounts in his emails (attached), it’s bizarre to think of a race in terms of who sunk when.

Throughout the weekend, we worked through the events in our minds, wondering what we had done wrong or what we could have done differently. There are clearly several things that went wrong, and probably some things we could have done better, but it became clear to us that we had prepared as well as we could have for this race. Even a bilge pump or two would probably not have saved us.

At the same time, though, five crews made it through. They did everything right, and were blessed by good luck. Any of them could have been overcome by a few ill-timed waves. They got it done. On Saturday night, as the first crew came in, everyone surrounded them and their boat, to congratulate them and figure out what it was about their craft that had gotten them through the first 20+ KM. We got some ideas for next year, but also saw that we had done many things similarly to them.

We are all itching to see if we could have survived, what we would have looked like/felt like/rowed like after 14 hours. We enjoyed the rest of the weekend, but it was painful to see how flat the water was on Sunday. We are tremendously disappointed that the race went down the way it did, but I don’t think we have any regrets for how we prepared or responded to the circumstances.

One thing I do know: if they had canceled the race due to the conditions, we would have been even more disappointed. How many times have I responded to a canceled race saying, “I would have rather tried to brave the conditions and have failed than not even get the chance to try?” Well, we got our chance.

Better to row and sink than to never row at all.

For all of you that have made it through the email this far, thanks for your patience and perserverance. Above all, thanks for your interest in and support of this endeavor. It means so much to me that we had so many people rooting for us. Special thanks to Marilyn, Robin, and Michael for coming with to Geneva.

The weekend didn’t go as planned, but it was an adventure nonetheless.

Best,
Liz