At the Row New York boathouses, Thursday is Boathouse day, which is a day for maintenance, repairs, and various behind-the-scenes work at the boathouse to keep them running smoothly for rowing. Although there is always a plan for the day (the tasks that need to be done, the problems that need to be fixed), boathouse day is also about “putting out fires” as they appear.
This Thursday, the first task found at the PJS boathouse was that a launch became untied from the dock, rose with the tide overnight, and got stuck on a rocky shore when the tide fell. The easiest solution was to leave it until the tide rose again, but that wouldn’t be until much later in the day, so the launch was left alone for the morning.
As the tasks were given out for the day, another unplanned problem was found – a shell on the top shelf was only just balanced on the rack and looked like it was about to fall off. It was quickly moved back into place, but this solution was short-lived as the problem was soon discovered to be the fact that part of the shell was not balanced on the rack in the first place. Solving problems and avoiding future issues is the main theme of boathouse day – in addition to the big tasks above, a shell was missing a bow ball and the oars needed to be re-organized.
The rest of the work involved labeling oars, re-taping oars with the correct colors, making sure there were enough life jackets in all of the boats and other tasks which had to be done for the boathouse.
When we go to rowing practice after school, many of us don’t realize the incredible amounts of work and effort that go into keeping a boathouse maintained and running throughout the week. Most of the time, the efforts of the boathouse team go unnoticed, so a huge thank you to the whole boathouse operations team, our coaches, and the group at PJS yesterday – Bailey, Ricky, Jackie, Nick, and Ian!
