Oh Dear! Rowers again...

John Cork employed by Eton College, was one of the Eton Boat builders, now retired, who worked at the Eton Boat Houses (now sold to developers) just upsteam of Windsor Bridge.
 
No Regrets said:
The lads said they were from Rafts boathouse, which is an Eton college place as far as I know, and the blazers were the same as Etons rowing blazers.

Boats name was John Cork II I think, something very much or exactly like that...

These were the pencil thin things with two seats in tandem, and an outboard mounted two thirds of the way down the hull. Colour White topsides, pale blue hull...;)
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Hence my post. Eton don't always stay on their lake and I think one of the boathouses has bee retained for River use. It s a much shorter walk for Eton Gentlemen than Dorney.....
 
I bear witness!

I bear witness. Incredible though it may seem, this realy did happen. Not only was the behaviour of so many rowers and coaches over the 24 hour period so bad (and so illegal), but their attitude about it and towards the other boat owners who they were clearly offending was unbelievably arrogant in the extreme...

No Regrets said:
Trust me, what I wrote was a fraction of the remainder of the utter rubbish we had to watch:

1/ Rowers stopping dead in front of motorised vessels who had to take severe evasive action to stop in time. >>Yup, they EVEN managed to cause one of French Borthers steamers to execute an emergency stop mid river - quite a feat, that! :eek:

2/ Rowers undertaking, when it was quite clear the vessels in question were attempting to moor up!! >>Yup. I can bear witness to that, because it ME that was attempting to moor up. And worse, despite my protestations and instructions to the contrary, rowers now on BOTH sides of my boat, then proceeded to use their OARS as a means of projecting themselves along the the side on my gelcoat :mad:

3/ Rowers colliding with other rowers...cretins... >>Yup, I witnesses one capsized rowing boat and another with the former ocupant in the water - quite separate ocasions.:(

4/ Rowers smashing their oars into moored boats. >>yup, see above. But not just my boat - others too, I might add.

5/ Rowers using the wrong side of the river for no reason whatsoever. >> yup, though to be fair, no change from normal behaviour there!:confused:

Something has to be done about this...:confused:
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>>YUP (again). Anybody want the Environment Agency incendent reference number can contact me. I wont be letting this go either. And nore will the boat mored behind me - implausible though it may seem, he was actually even more fuming than I was. :cool:
 
Moxon said:
"little blue perils "

Can you post one of your pictures of the offenders here? I don't know what sort of motor boat the rowing, (associated), people use so struggle to quantify your complaint.


Thanks.
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This was taken on the preceding Friday evening. I had already had to ask this gent several times to mind his wash, to slow down, and to 'manage the behaviour' of the rowers. When he paid little / no attention to this, I photgraphed him! (Sadly a rather poor phot due to being a poor quality phone, not a camera.)

The same gentleman was again acting as attending coach on Saturday. He was not the culprit of the most offensive behaviour and wash. He was simply not particularly bothered about interacting with and managing the young rowers in his charge.

But, as requested, this shows an example of the club boats in question.
 
Thanks for posting the picture. As mentioned I was curious to see what type of boat it is. It looks to this novice eye as something that would glide through the water with very little wash - N.B. I am not disputing that was not the case :-)

Why would they have the outboard in the the boat like that? Or is it an old boat and that's where the rowing servants used to sit?
 
They do actually produce relatively little wash, it is the nature of the wash that is the issue. As they are long and narrow, the wash tends to come off them nearly parallel (or at a very acute angle) to the direction of travel, hence moored boats take the wash predominantly beam on. This gives a good old rolling motion but not too much pitching, roll being arguably the most damaging / uncorfortable axis.
 
boatone said:
Did any of you actually make a note of the ID codes on any of the boats - coaching or rowing?
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As I think was stated in an earlier post(?), it is very difficult to make out the boat markings at a distance, and especially when they are travelling at speed. I made a mental note of the name of the above pictured boat, but then promptly forgot it (old age, Im afraid!). And of course he wasn't really the biggest most offensive culprit - if you were to single any one boat out, it would for sure be the last boat returning at around 7pm Saturday evening.

I think there are actually two related but separate issues here:
1/ The general behaviour of the the rowers, attending coaches and possibly non-coaching users of the powerred coach boats all day Saturday (and Friday evening).
2/ The particular totally outrageous behavious of the last boat passing us on Saturday evening. BTW, Im not really much of a professional judge of speed, but I am pretty sure it was a lot faster than John's quote of 10mph (sorry John, but I think you might actually have been 'understating', LOL!), and I have NEVER EVER seen any boat go as fast they were on that ocasion (not on the non-tidalThames) - no, not even that annoying so-called "safety boat" rib that goes looking for overdue hire boats around Windsor - possibly doing about 1.5x the speed of him, if that's a useful reference!).
 
Yes guys. You are right, not much wash usually. But at their speeds, and when overloaded as they were on the last case, a great deal of wash indeed. Two 40ft boats were nearly pulled clean of their moorings - I jest you not.

The other issue is that they passed us so very close, a bout 2-3feet tops - which must have been pretty deliverate since at the time there was no other boats on the river (other than those moored), so no reason to pass us so close and so fast. Other than the, dare I say obvious, explanation that the last fly-past was actualy a quite deliberate act of "let's go get those moaning MOBOs." Seriously, there is no other logical explanation.
 
I thought that unless they are displaying a blue pennant they are still required to stick within the speed limit?

The boat in the picture doesn't seem to be showing a pennant!

CJL
 
thames cruiser said:
Nope. No penants on any boats at any time.
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I think the pennants have been superseded by the club ID and boat codes.

The EA Users Guide to the Thames says:
Exemptions from this speed limit include:
• Boats engaged in training, coaching or umpiring rowers and which display a pennant or mark issued by us.
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Last edited:
For the record I was moored at Windsor last weekend and when I heard the robo launch approaching at a pace I jumped up (as is my wont) to check that I didn't need to defend my boat from a tsunami style wash, the launches were definitely going too fast but the wash was really quite acceptable.

A group of lads in a speedboat around 22.00 causing much more wash.

There was witness to some shocking boat-handling by members of this forum, but I am not going to divulge.

I see the robo launches almost daily, Ross is quite correct in that the nature of the wash is a bit disturbing, but the amplitude is usually considerably less than the average 42' fly-bridge on tickover or 28' cruiser on WOT trying to get to the next lock before everyone else.

This thread is more about the same old "them and us" drivel that goes on between the mobo-ers and the sailers on the other fora
 
rr_123 said:
.

This thread is more about the same old "them and us" drivel that goes on between the mobo-ers and the sailers on the other fora
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I suppose I understand where you are coming from RR, but just for the record, for my part this is most definitely NOT the "same old them and us drivel"...

The rowers repeatedly used their oars to push along our boats; the coaches made no attempt to manage them appropriately; and then as has been witnessed some coach boats were themselves behaving quite atrociously. This behaviour was far beyond the normal minor inconsiderations that i think you are inferring.

Point of further example.. I had a 35ft Broom rafted onto my boat at one point, and despite the obvious stability of two large-ish cruisers secured together and to the bankside, a passing coach boat nearly caused my wife to fall off the bathing platform (of the inshore boat!) - this is not minor wash, this not acceptable behaviour, and this is not "them and us drivel".

I know such banter exists, but this not the case this time.
 
I disagree.

We watched the huge pleasure cruisers pass by with nearly no wash.

Yes, there were cruisers passing too fast, and we shouted them down the same as the rowers mates in motorboats.

You are very very wrong in your suggestions this is an anti-rowing thing, it's about people in motor boats speeding, simple as that.


http://youtu.be/4VmzcTEIyDQ


This was actually one of the few we could video, due the the fact the ones coming the other way were so close!

There are plenty of witnesses to these events, which seemed to be affecting the island-moored boats worse than the ones on the meadow where we were originally.
 
Where's the wash?


No Regrets said:
I disagree.

We watched the huge pleasure cruisers pass by with nearly no wash.

Yes, there were cruisers passing too fast, and we shouted them down the same as the rowers mates in motorboats.

You are very very wrong in your suggestions this is an anti-rowing thing, it's about people in motor boats speeding, simple as that.


http://youtu.be/4VmzcTEIyDQ


This was actually one of the few we could video, due the the fact the ones coming the other way were so close!

There are plenty of witnesses to these events, which seemed to be affecting the island-moored boats worse than the ones on the meadow where we were originally.
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Behind the video.

I simply grabbed the camera and filmed, having been frustrated at early attempts :D

Where is wash normally? Yes...a way behind, not in front :rolleyes:

Bear in mind most of them slowed down as soon as they saw the camera! Sheesh...;)
 
Not sure the relevance of your earlier frustrations etc.

Even as a novice boater I have established that wash follows the boat. I'm just surprised there isn't more of it. From the earlier posts here I expected at least 3' waves.


No Regrets said:
Behind the video.

I simply grabbed the camera and filmed, having been frustrated at early attempts :D

Where is wash normally? Yes...a way behind, not in front :rolleyes:

Bear in mind most of them slowed down as soon as they saw the camera! Sheesh...;)
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3' waves.

Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

Seriously dude, how high does a wash need to be to throw moored boats all over the place?

Less than 12 inches I would imagine, which is more than enough to sink a rower :o

More to the point, what would you estimate the speed to be?
 
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