Monomonday :Wooden Rowing shell

A glorious day in Seattle for a row on the lake. Doesn’t get any better! Before I left the boathouse, I lay on the floor up in the Pocock Rowing Center clubroom to take this picture of a classic wooden racing single (mono?) hanging from the (wooden) ceiling. It’s a 26’ cedar wood shell (teardrop design: can’t appreciate it here but this means the skinny hull gets a bit wider in back of where one sits (which is the bow end)so it will be more balanced when the rower lays back during the stroke...) You can’t quite appreciate the fine cedar patina in mono. The decking is a waterproof material. This one belonged to our coach who rowed it into his 80s, and who knew George Pocock, the Englishman who raced on the river Thames before coming to the NW and starting the business of building these classic shells in 1911, making them the oldest shell builder in the US. Now they have evolved to carbon fiber, hypercarbon and who know what all fancy lightweight materials, and Pocock doesn’t build these anymore, but a person in Port Townsend has bought the plans and the mold to keep the wooden boat tradition alive..

It’s a work of art for sure.

The rest of the Monomonday:wood hosted by TywynSue is HERE