Sunday, March 10, was a perfect day—calm and dry and partly sunny—for a regatta. BIR was lucky to have picked it for its Salt Watta Regatta 2019.
The regatta was actually a sprint scrimmage pitting guest Olympic Area Rowing against the home crew. The races will help prepare the rivals for the spring regattas that lie ahead. The sprints took rowers from deep in Eagle Harbor out to the old Wyckoff Plant at Pritchard Park where scores of spectators and people beaching their dogs cheered on the teams.
The Cascade mountains, the Olympic mountains, the ferry, some elegant sailboats, and the Seattle skyline provided amazing backdrops for the event. The ferry also generated a little wake that rowers had to contend with post-races.
OAR brought along their quads, which are the boats that have each rower holding a starboard and a port oar instead of the 4s in which each rower is assigned one oar on one side of the boat. Quads obviously go much faster than 4s, so the BIR teams got an 18-second head start in those races.
These were the races:
- Men Varsity 8+,
- Men’s Varsity Lightweight and JV 8+,
- Women’s Novice 4x/4+,
- Women’s Varsity 8+,
- Women’s Varsity Lightweight and JV 8+,
- Men’s Novice 4+/4x,
- Men’s Varsity Lightweight 4+,
- Men’s Varsity 4x,
- Women’s Novice 8+,
- Women’s Varsity Lightweight 4+,
- Men’s Varsity 4+/4x,
- Men’s Novice 8+, and
- Women’s Varsity 4+/4x.
The race with the most boats was the Men’s Novice 4+/4x, which featured 5 BIR and 2 OAR boats. That race and the Women’s Varsity 4+/4x, which featured 3 BIR and 3 OAR boats, had to contend with a buoyed sailboat, so some of the boats raced to one side of the sailboat and some to the other.
Rowers and family enjoyed food from the BIR camp kitchen set up on the quad above the Stanley Pocock Legacy Rowing Center, which is partway built.
Here are photos of the event:
Photos by Sarah Lane.