JOB DESCRIPTION

“Beck stands at the back. She steers, guides and coaches. Grace is the one sitting in front of her: she’s the stroke; the timekeeper. In every race you need to keep a good pace and stroke-rate, and this needs to vary or be maintained at certain times. Grace is like the metronome of the boat; she just keeps ticking over.

“I’m second stroke. I’m there for strength, pretty much – to pull on the oar. Behind me is the second bow – that’s Kristen. We’re the engine room. We work together. We sit right in the middle part of the boat where you get the best pull from your oars.

“Katie is up the front. When we’re powering through the water, especially through waves, the boat bounces a lot. As soon as you hit the water on the down, the water puts a massive ‘brake’ on the boat. Katie’s job is to keep that nose down. If we can keep it from bouncing in time, we can get the boat to really cut through. Because she’s up high, it’s hard for her to put in a lot of effort; her oar is a lot more angled than ours.

“When we head out, smashing through waves, the two girls behind me in the bow are always up in the air; they have to go up and make sure they don’t fall out! If everyone is doing their job, nothing ever goes wrong. But as soon as someone starts worrying about someone else not putting in, or someone starts slacking off, it can all come undone. Beck always says, ‘Pull the weight off your mate’s back.’ If you don’t like the people you row with, you’re not going to row very well, because you’re not going to want to help them out.”

Female Surf Rowers Photos By Shelby Hayden Craig

SWEEPING UP

“It’s always the sweep’s job to make sure we’re working together and rowing together. Beck’s responsible for the race plan. Because we can’t see where we’re going, she’s our eyes and ears during a race or training session. It doesn’t work without a sweep. A couple of times she’s been thrown out. You don’t have the single person guiding you when something like that happens; it takes a lot for one person to stand up out of a four-person crew and say, ‘Now, I’m telling you what to do.’ Technique is such a big thing, too. Beck is always telling us, ‘Elbows up! Shoulders back!’ Everything we do is technique-based.”

RACE-DAY ROUTINE

“Usually it’s a very early start. You have to get your gear off the trailer, then get your equipment off the boat, and then get your boat down onto the beach. Then you have to get your tents set up, etc.

“Each crew is different and has its own areas it likes to focus on before a race. We’ll go out and get the lungs going and get the heart-rate up with a nice big warm-up; a nice long row. Then, if we feel we need to, we’ll do a couple of practice starts, and maybe a turn, say, a couple of hundred metres out and back, just to make sure we know what the surf is doing.

“The gate cans are the first marker – they’re at half-way. They’re always out past the break; if the break’s big, they’re going to be further out. Then you have the buoy cans, which you turn at. For our warm-up, we’ll usually go out to the buoys, then come back in and do a little bit of work at moderate effort, usually for ten or 15 minutes. We’ll build it up, go for a bit of effort; hard to flat-out for one bit and then bring it back down, then go up again just to make sure we’re fully clicked on and ready to go for the day. As soon as the day starts, it just keeps ticking over and if you’re not ready, it kind of just gets away from you.”