Welcome to BAIR ISLAND NEWS, BIAC's electronic newsletter. The purpose of BIN is to foster better communication with members about the Center's activities and programs, to promote a greater sense of community within BIAC, and to spread awareness of BIAC's activities beyond the membership list.

Your comments and contributions are always welcome. Please email them to the editor, Craig Canine. Thanks!

IN THIS ISSUE

GENERAL BIAC NEWS

  • BIAC Member Profile: Jason LaRoche -- Headed for the Big-Time

  • Watch Out For That Log!

PADDLING NEWS

  • BIAC Paddling Program Holds WaveChaser Events

  • Bair Island Paddlers to Host NCOCA Rules Clinic

ROWING NEWS

 • Advanced Sweep Program Lands New Coaches

 • Quick Takes: Candy Bars, PIRCs, CRASH-Bs, Insurance, and more

COMING EVENTS

THE BOOKEND: Two Great Reads for Rowers and Paddlers

GENERAL BIAC NEWS

Almost everybody who rows or paddles at BIAC has seen a tall, lanky but powerful guy with close-cropped red hair hanging around the boathouse, erging, or tending to his yellow single sculling shell. As BIAC's leading contender for elite national and international rowing titles, Jason has been doing two-a-days for months now. Soon, though, we'll be bidding him a temporary farewell as he heads east to train for the US National Team qualifying regattas. Bair Island News caught up with Jason recently to get the lowdown on his rowing roots and his bid for the big-time. Here's his story:

I rowed at Georgia Tech in college. Tech isn't a rowing powerhouse, but we put out a few good boats that were capable of surprising some of the bigger schools on occasion. During my junior year, we had four or five really fast guys on the team. One of them, Marc Millard, was in the US Lightweight 4x within a year of graduating, and others have gone on to win USRowing National Titles and Canadian Henley golds. All of those guys are training to make the Olympic team in 2004. I was in there with them, but decided to go to grad school and went into rowing hibernation for a couple of years. I had this idea that I wanted to get a doctorate, but I changed my mind, finished my masters, and took a job out here in the Bay Area. Once I got out here, I started sculling again. At first, I didn't plan on competing, but rowing has always been an all-or-nothing thing for me. The next thing I knew, I was buying a boat and Sully [BIAC sculling coach Mike Sullivan] was coaching me.

I've been training for this year's national team selection regattas. The first one is in late April. I figure I have a decent shot at making the quad. I'm considering taking a leave of absence from work to train in Philadelphia this spring. I have an invitation from Ted Nash at Penn Athletic Club to train there. Ted is probably one of the top coaches in world, having coached dozens of Olympic gold medallists and World Champions. There are a lot of fast heavyweight rowers at PennAC, so I'll get plenty of competition in practice.

I need to get more race experience. I'm also going there to find a partner for the double. The second selection regatta is entirely pairs and doubles, so I need to find a partner for the race. If the single or double don't work out, I can try to jump into a 4+ or 2+ and try to make the team in one of those boats. Every year, PennAC sends a 2+ and a 4+ to the national team trials and every year at least one of those boats wins the right to represent the US at Worlds. Last year, a couple of friends of mine rowed the 2+ for PennAC, won the right to race at the World Championships and won a silver medal there. Who knows, maybe training in Philly will help me do something like that.

We hope so, Jason. Good look on the Schuylkill and wherever else your oars may take you.

While drifting chunks of wood are always a potential hazard in Redwood Creek, we're talking about a different log here -- the log book. Two messages here: 1) The sign-out log has a new home, and 2) PLEASE use it! (Why? See EXCITING ANECDOTE below.)

First, location. You will find the log book in a new plastic storage cabinet sitting next to the Coke machine, which is outside the boat house, just to the right of the place where all the boat slings are kept. Bow lights have also been moved to this cabinet. The lock on this cabinet has the same combination as the locks on the oar lockers.

Second, on the importance of using the log book -- a recent incident illustrates why all members need to log out and back in EVERY time they go out on the water. Just this past week, several BIAC boats set out at 5:30am for what looked like a nice, flat-water row (the proverbial 3-hour cruise of Gilligan's Island fame). At about 6am, a sudden squall let loose with high winds and driving rain. In no time, the water in Redwood Creek became the opposite of flat. A number of rowing craft were out by the wires at the time, including two singles that, ahem, had not signed out in the log book. Fortunately, BIAC coaches in two separate launches witnessed the scullers' distress and went to the rescue, loading both boats and scullers onto the launches and bringing them safely back to the dock. Needless to say, if the rescuers and other folks hadn't been near the scullers when the storm hit, no one might have known that they were out there.

Don't be left out in the cold. Use the log book.

PADDLING NEWS

On February 15 and 16, the BIAC paddling program hosted a weekend of canoe and kayak racing. The February 15 race started near the Redwood City public boat ramp, circled Bair Island, and finished back at the boat ramp. With 105 boats entered, it was the largest canoe/kayak race of the winter.

The weekend races drew competitors from as far away as San Diego, and many of the West Coast's best were there. The races were #5 and #6 in the WaveChaser series sponsored by the BIAC paddling program. For more info, go to www.wavechaser.com. (Photos courtesy of Rick Leton, Y2Kanu.com)

ROWING NEWS

Rowers participating in the Men's and Women's Advanced Sweep program are extremely excited about their new head coach, Laura Simon, who joined the program early this month. Laura comes to BIAC with an extensive and distinguished record of coxing and coaching on the east coast, mainly with the University of Massachusetts women's crew. She served as coxswain of the UMass women's varsity 8+ that placed second in the NCAA Championships in both 1997 and 1998 and claimed three consecutive Atlantic 10 titles. She also coxed the varsity 4+ that placed second at the Head of the Charles in 1997. She has attended numerous USRowing camps and participated in the U.S. National selections camps (1997-2001).

A native of Moorpark, CA, Laura recently moved back west after retiring from elite-level rowing. "I wanted to move someplace where I could live on the beach and surf every day and have wonderful access to great hiking, climbing, and backpacking," she says. She is currently doing course work to get a Special Education teaching credential to add to her high-school English teaching credential. When she's not coaching, surfing, or attending classes, Laura is working as a substitute and home teacher for the San Mateo and Sequoia high school districts.

Joining Laura in the launch as assistant coach is John Paul (J.P.) Sekulich. J.P. coaches the Saint Ignatius High School crew in the afternoons. He rowed with Saint Ignatius for four years, then went to Cal and rowed with Steve Gladstone for two years.

Welcome, Laura and J.P.!

• The Women's and Men's Advanced Sweep programs are both planning to send an 8+ to the San Diego Crew Classic on April 5-6. Assuming all goes as planned, this will be the first time BIAC has sent two boats to SDCC, and the first time we've sent both a men's boat and a women's boat to an out-of-area, national-level race.

• The BIAC Juniors Valentine's Day fund raising event (selling See's candies) went well. The team has raised close to $800 and is planning to continue selling See's chocolate bars -- the perfect rowing/paddling fuel. Details on how to order will be posted inside the boat house.

• Juniors Team coaches Ally Boccieri and Carl Sziebert would like to remind BIAC members, friends, and all rowing groupies that the team's race schedule is posted on the BIAC web site, and they'd love it if folks would come cheer them on. The squad's first novice race is March 1 at Lake Merced.

• More BIAC Junior Crew news: Seven rowers and one cox from the team competed in the Peninsula Indoor Rowing Championships on Feb. 2 in Burlingame. Five of the rowers set personal best times on their 2K erg pieces. After less than two weeks on the squad, the team's newest coxswain also leapt on an erg to compete in a 500-meter sprint. Congratulations to all eight of our Junior team members who competed. (See all PIRC results.)

• Speaking of the PIRCs on Feb. 2, BIAC's own Ed Alderman (see story in last month's issue) pulled a great 2K piece and became one of only six PIRC competitors to qualify for the CRASH-B World Indoor Rowing Championships. Of the six qualifiers, the top four will get the PIRC's four allotted tickets to the CRASH-B sprints. Ed beat the qualifying time for his age group by a 13 seconds, placing him among the elite four who will compete in Boston on Feb. 23. Stay tuned to see how he did -- or check the results yourself. (Ed's event is Veteran Men B Lwt.) Go Ed, go!

• Rowing equipment manager Carl Sziebert reports that BIAC is purchasing four new cox-boxes and that he will be replacing the wiring systems in all of our coxed boats over the next month.

• THIS IS BORING BUT REALLY IMPORTANT FOR ALL COMPETATIVE ROWERS. You may not have known it, but if you competed in a USRowing-sanctioned regatta in previous years as a BIAC member, you were covered by liability insurance that was a part of BIAC's club membership in USRowing. Well, guess what? All that has changed as of this year. Now each individual competitor must be a member of USRowing in order to be covered. As part of this change, USRowing has adopted a one-time liability waiver form that members can fill out online, instead of signing individual waivers for each regatta. See more details on the USRowing web site.

COMING EVENTS

• March 15-- BIAC Work Party, 9am - 12pm

THE BOOKEND

In winter, author Jill Fredston and her husband, Doug Fesler, live in Anchorage and work as avalanche experts and co-directors of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center. Come summer, they disappear for three months of rowing and paddling in Arctic and sub-Arctic waters. Over many years, they have explored more than 20,000 miles of coastline in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, and Sweden -- she traveling backwards in her ocean-going rowing shell, he moving face-forward in his sea kayak. Fredston writes vividly about these trips, which include encounters with polar bears, treacherous ice, Arctic storms, and some of the most remote and beautiful scenery on Earth. But it's not just about bagging pretty views and exotic experiences for Fredston. "Wilderness rowing is far more than sport to me," she writes; "it has been a conduit to know and trust myself. It is my way of being, of thinking, of seeing. In the process, rowing has evolved from something I do to some way that I am."

• Drawn to the Rhythm: A Passionate Life Reclaimed by Sara Hall (Norton, 2002)

Like Rowing to Latitude (above), this is a beautifully written book about its female author's rowing experiences. In another respect, however, the two books are polar opposites. Jill Fredston's account of her water-borne travels with her husband -- together, but in separate boats -- amounts, among other things, to an intimate portrait of a marriage. For Sara Hall, however, her single shell is a vehicle of escape from a stifling, abusive husband. Her discovery of rowing coincides with her awakening to a new life, or her reclaiming (as the book's subtitle suggests) of a "passionate life" that she lost somewhere between cutting the wedding cake and having children. Three years after her first outing in an old single near her home on the north shore of Long Island, Hall won the World Master's Championship in the women's single shell. Hall's rowing shell is a chrysalis in which she transforms herself from an obedient, unhappy housewife into a passionate, fiercely independent world champion. She now lives in the Boston area, shares child custody with her former husband, and continues to find joy and freedom in competitive rowing.

GO BAIR!