asldjfadslkjf

Thanks for all your guys' help with my last post :)

I figured out that HASS-D stuff/ realized that it's not too big of a deal and that there are loads of other HASS classes that I will ultimately be able to take...

Today was a crazy day on the water. Actually, crazy is an understatement.

In the basin of the canal, the draggon boaters were racing, and on top of that, there was a ton of wind. It's NEVER windy so immediately I should have taken this as a bad omen. So, since there was a ton of boat traffic and it was windy, almost everyone who showed up for practice (masters, seniors, other juniors, etc) decided to take their boats down "the narrows" - including myself, my pair partner, and our once pretty boat (foreshadow) that has been christened the "Gare Bear" aka the "Gangsta Bear". Now these narrows are pretty nasty... it's essentially a marina with boats parked on either side for a a few hundred meters, then there is break-wall and a beach for about 2k. In one particular area, there is a no- passing zone because there is a large sandbar there, and the steering can get pretty crazy in these areas so you are supposed to check over your shoulder every few strokes and stay on your side of the water (two way traffic). However, today, while warming up and heading down to the designated area where our coach told us to wait, two nuts and their respective washers fell off the part of the rigger that my pair and I share (yayyyyy Hudson wing riggers). Thus, we were essentially stranded, but luckily we were in the narrowest part of the canal so we let the wind blow us in a little bit towards the beach because we were both unable to row without dislocating the riggers. So, being the trooper that I am, I hopped out into the knee deep, kind of dirty water (lottttts of duck and Canadian geese poop of course), beached the bow of the boat, and held the stern out so the rudder wouldn't get caught in the sand and waited for our coach who was apparently helping a single out that had flipped! When she finally gets to us, she realized she didn't have any spare nuts, so she had to boat all the way back to the boathouse and back out to us. We finally get the hardware and are finally on our way when a group of doubles racing down the narrows and not checking their course (horrible idea) nearly hit us as we were rowing up! No injuries there, just a tangle of oars and almost a flip (attempting to bring the oar all the in in a pair = bad idea). However, one of the doubles NOT involved in our traffic jam actually did flip and our coach had to go help them. My partner and I, sick of waiting and being in the way of other boats, just decided to start the work out. First ten strokes, things are looking good... I'm bow, so I check my course: looks clear, so we enter the no passing zone, slowly building up our rate and pressure. As we are half way through, all the sudden a men's master completely collides with us! My pretty Hudson wing rigger snapped clean in two places between me, the Gare Bear, his boat, and himself. Not fun. The master rower was fine... let's call this little incident a "hit and row" on his part. He kept going and told us to wait for our coach. THANKS. Riggerless, we let the wind push us in towards the beach again and this time we both hop out, asses the damage and realized that no hardware was fixing this problem. Our coach arrives and helps us precariously hoist the Gare onto the launch, padded by life jackets and my body. We head in are are greeted by a not- so happy head coach and several stunned rowers after seeing the completely bent/snapped rigger.

I was pretty shaken up because I've heard pretty bad rowing stories about accidents and how people were never able to row ever again. :((((