Dan Brokaw
We have always enjoyed being on the water but found the confinement of kayaks disagreeable to our backs. We had received a copy of the book by Jill Fredston, “Rowing to Latitudes” for Christmas and discovered the sport of rowing. With Jill’s help we scrounged around and found an Alden shell and a converted rowing kayak to learn in. We laminated some drawings of the basic stroke sequence, taped them in our borrowed shells and taught ourselves the fundamentals of rowing. We then discovered that there was a rowing club in a nearby city, the Anchorage Rowing Association and joined up. Since then we have become obsessed with rowing, from open water exploring to racing in the Masters Nations and the Head of the Charles. This fall on a trip to New Zealand we even got to row and race with the West End Rowing Club—what a treat. Rowing in Alaska does have a few drawbacks, one being our short summer season, which has led us to the standard love-hate relationship with the erg. So when it is snowy and dark outside we pump out the metres on the erg thinking about the endless summer days to come of rowing on Alaska’s pristine waters.
