Gently Down The Stream

Patrica has taken up rowing. Actually, she hasn’t, I only said that knowing she’ll come and correct me.

“It’s not rowing,” she’ll say, “It’s paddling.”

And, indeed, it is. The style of boat which Patricia paddles is a Dragon Boat which, according to Wikipedia, is a human-powered watercraft originating from the Pearl River Delta region of China's southern Guangdong Province. Fair enough. For me though, having seen them practice on our local lake, it will always be ‘Hawaii Five Oh’ style paddling, with that ‘dud duh duh duh duuuuuuh duh’ theme ringing in my brain.

Seeing Trish take up the paddle reminds me of how much rowing was a part of my own life as a kid and as a teen and not at all since. Trish can tell you more about Dragon Boating if you like. The rest of this post will be all me.

I grew up right beside the Garavogue river in Sligo. We had boats on the river, and we used them to venture upriver and onto Lough Gill where we fished for Salmon and Trout and sometimes Pike, if there was a Pike competition. Dad had a boat, and my two older brothers also had boats. I didn’t ever have a boat, but I had the use of any of the three if I needed it and if I asked nicely. The boats were 18ft long, initially wooden but subsequently glass fibre construction with two bench seats for rowing and a sturdy stern which could bear an outboard motor of a couple of horsepower. Although it was many years before anyone got themselves up to owning a several horsepower outboard motor or ‘engine’ as we called them. The weapon of choice was a Seagull 40 Plus two stroke engine of about 3/4 of a horsepower.

But enough about mechanical propulsion and horsepower and such. The engines were used to accelerate the boats up the river and on to the fishing fields of the lake. Once there, and for the majority of the fishing day to follow, we would row. Both my Dad and my eldest brother Michael favoured using the Forty Plus at a low warble to gently troll their rods around the nooks and crevasses of the lake. But my elder brother Eddie, who I think I spent most lake time with, liked to row and row all day long. Whenever I went with him, we would bring two sets of wooden oars. He would sit on the bench seat nearest the engine, now tipped up out of the water to reduce drag. I would sit behind him on the bench that was nearest the bow. We had cushions wrapped in hard plastic for the necessary water proofing (it rained a lot) and we each had a two-by-two lath in the floor of the boat to brace our feet on. We had galvanised steel oarlocks that were dulled and burred, and which had a little dowel pushed through the bottom of them when they were in position, so that an errant oar would not pull one out and drop it into the black bottomless lake.

And we rowed.

No music. Very little chat. Three lines extending into the water behind, gentle trolling for the elusive Salmon. Eddie did the navigation and steering while I just provided a little low-wattage support to the pulling with my advanced bow position and my slightly too-short-to-be-entirely-effective oars.

But I learned.

I learned how to angle the oar slightly as it entered the water, to ease its passage, and to tilt the oar blade horizontal when it was out of the water again and on its back sweep, to ease turbulence on the blade. I learned to watch Eddie’s oars and keep time with his time so that our oars moved in close synchronicity and never-ever collided. I learned how to ease off on one oar and increase a little on the other when a change of direction was being made. I learned to love the deep whirlpools that were left in the water when the oar was removed, and I loved how those spinning holes in the water fell away behind the bow of the boat and persisted in their eddying until they were finally lost to sight.

Trout fishing was a completely different jam.

In late April and May, we would sit still in the boats in the sheltered bays of the lake and we would let the boat drift sidelong to the breeze, casting long lines out to the leeward side and dropping mayfly dressed hooks close to the mouths of the surface-sucking fish. I was never a good fly fisherman where my Dad and brothers were all highly skilled. I was generally happy being boatman* or ‘Gillie’ if you’re posh, which we clearly were not. I would operate with one oar, out the windward side, to allow the fly fishermen on either side of me to have a clear undisturbed palate on which to operate. With gentle motion of the oar, I would keep the boat straight up or ‘tip’ it laterally if fish were spotted feeding off to the side. When we reached the end of a drift run, I would pop out the other oar and take us back to the start as quickly as possible. No fish got caught on the row back to the end of the bay, so it was best done quickly.

Perhaps by osmosis, perhaps by practice, I became quite good at rowing. A good boatman. Able to guide and manoeuvre and turn with something close to instinct. As a teen, when I was allowed, I took to taking one of the boats out on the river after school. No engine, just the oars and oarlocks. I would bring a small rod and chase perch on the edge of the bullrushes across from the Back Avenue. I enjoyed the solitude and the gentle lapping of the river on the side of the boat. The perch I caught, I put back. They were no use to anyone for food. Their prickly back fins often inflicted a little reciprocal damage on me before they hurried away.

I haven’t rowed a boat in thirty years. Maybe forty at this stage. Maybe I never will again. But the memories of it all. The breeze and the waves and the time to think and dream – that’s all still in there. I’m grateful for the rather extraordinary upbringing I was gifted with.

So, paddle on, Patricia. I can see the attraction.

 

 

 

* Note: I am aware that I use‘men’ a lot in the above piece. ‘Boatmen’ ‘Oarsmen’ ‘Fishermen’. Of course ‘person’ would be much more appropriate. It’s just, in this case, I’m trying to evoke the way we spoke and even thought in the Seventies, on a river or on a lake. I’ll do better next time.