Reboarding
“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.”
What is the scenario that most inspires fear when rowing in rough water? Typically, it’s falling out of the boat. I hear it so often: “What happens if you flip over?” The answer is simple: “ I get back in.” Sure, there’s more to it than that-–usually I get a good “woo-hoo!” going on because if I’m flipping my boat there is probably something very exciting going on, and I often get a good laugh too, because it’s awfully fun to be rolling around in waves.
Reboarding is the most important rough water technique, by far. It is a requirement for safe exploration of challenging conditions. Once the mental fear of falling out of the boat is overcome, reboarding itself isn’t that hard. The key to reboarding well is control during every moment of the process. Here’s my recommended process:
Start practicing from inside the boat. This is especially important if you are a beginner and haven’t tried getting back in your boat yet. It’s much easier to “reverse engineer” the process and be familiar with each step than to jump in the water and find out you can’t get back aboard!
Boat-to-water Step 1:
Move off seat, swing legs overboard
First, get off your seat. Send the empty seat sliding towards your feet, so you are sitting on the cockpit deck with the seat between your legs. Row around for awhile with your arms and back. This is actually a skill that will come in handy in other situations beyond reboarding, as it’s not uncommon to be knocked off your seat in really heavy surf. See how much speed you can get up rowing while off your seat.
After getting comfortable rowing with your torso from the deck, its time to start getting wet. Grab both your oar handles in one hand and swing your legs over the side. Hang out here until you feel rock solid. Generally, the boat will be more stable leaned a bit towards your legs. Your feet in the water can help stabilize the boat. Keep the oar blades feathered.
Boat-to-water Step 2:
Roll onto stomach
While seated, grab both oar handles with the arm that’s further away from them. This movement will start rolling you in the right direction. Support with your free hand on the deck. Push your oar hand down to the deck (even better, put the oar handles on the seat to trap the seat in place, as seen in the picture above) so the handles brace and that hand can provide additional support as you place yourself on your stomach.
Notice how stable the boat is with your legs in the water and your torso on the deck. The boat should lean towards your legs as they dangle in the water. Use your legs paddling in the water as needed to keep the boat stable, and find the position of your hips on the deck that gives you the best balance. Too much of your body on the boat and the boat will start tipping side to side. Too much of your body in the water and the boat will angle too sharply and you’ll work too hard to keep hanging onto an over-slanted deck.
When ready, just slip from there into the water! Having accomplished this maneuver from inside the boat, you will be familiar with the body positions needed to reboard. So when you get back in the boat by reversing those steps, you won’t feel a need to rush: you can calm the nerves and keep the boat under constant control. Now simply reverse the sequence and get in the boat from the water!
WATER-To-BOAT Step 1:
Prep the boat
If you did a real bang-up capsize, the boat may be upside down. If so, the best bet is to step on the outrigger, then grab the deck’s edge (gunwale) as the boat starts to flip right-side-up, so you are using both arms and legs (and bodyweight) to right the boat. Many inexperienced rowers attempt to right the boat by climbing on top and trying to pull it back over. Coastal boats are remarkably stable upside down, and all that climbing around on the slippery round hull is likely to get you washed right back off. Instead, step on the rigger.
Sort out the oars, starting with the far side oar. This might mean making a big lunge onto the deck to reach the oarlock and swing the oar handle where you can reach it. As long as you keep your legs in the water and the boat leaned towards your legs, this will be stable and controlled (as this position was already practiced above). Once the oars are aligned and feathered, make sure you are back in the water as you organize everything in preparation for reboarding. Slide the seat towards the foot brace. Take both oar handles in one hand. I like to put them right onto the seat, which holds the seat in place. You should be fully immersed in the water at this point.
Step 2: Torso Up
Pull up onto the deck, placing your torso across the deck with your legs still in the water, finding the hip position previously discovered (when moving from the boat into the water) for best balance.
Step 3: Get Seated
Using your hands to help, flip your hips towards a seated position. You’ll probably not get all the way onto your rear, but will land with the hips a bit sideways. This is no problem, just keep rolling until fully seated. Practice this until you can get your hips to land right between your seat tracks every time.
Rough Water Tip: (a.k.a. The important stuff for coastal!)
Perform all of the above steps with the boat parallel to the waves. It might seem better to point the boat’s bow into the waves, but since most boats do not hold this position in heavy waves or wind, you are better off being proactive by positioning it parallel (broadside) to the waves. Put your body on the side the waves are coming from. Generally, this is the windward side of the boat, but not always as occasionally the waves and wind will be in opposing directions. So always place yourself according to the waves, with your body on the side of the boat the waves are coming from. The reason for this is that waves will want to roll the boat, and if you put your body weight on the wave side, your weight will counter the wave’s push, making it very, very difficult for the boat to flip. Also, your boat is much more buoyant than your body. If you put the boat between you and the waves, each wave will violently push the boat on top of you, making reboarding frustrating at the least, but more likely quite dangerous as you could be hit in the head with the boat. Keeping your body into the waves maintains control, as the waves will try to push the boat away from you rather than trying to bang you in the head with it. Hang on tight and use your body as a drogue, and the boat will stay well behaved.
Step 4: Swing feet in
At this point you are seated on the deck, legs in the water. If you need to stabilize the boat, take a moment to do so, but if you are feeling good, swing your legs right in. With practice, the transition from flipping from stomach, to seated, to-legs-swinging-in can become one smooth, continuous, and quick motion.
Step 5: Upper Body Row
Take up the oars in each hand and immediately start rowing with arms and back while seated on the deck. Don’t worry about securing your feet yet, just place them on the foot board. Rowing right away will drain all the water out, making the boat much more stable (boats become awkward and rolly when swamped). Turn the boat bow into the seas at this point.
Step 6: Get onto your seat
The next step, getting the seat back under you, can be dicey, so you want to be able to do it very quickly. Be patient and execute this step between waves or during a lull. Feather the oars and hold them with one hand firmly on the water’s surface. Place the other hand behind you, directly along the centerline of the boat. Lift your hips just high enough for the seat to slide under you, which you make happen with a quick kick from your heel (the other foot is firmly braced against the footboard). With the bow facing the waves and your body weight centered, the boat won’t rock side to side, and with enough practice it will take all of a second to perform this maneuver.
There are a few questions I often get on the whole kicking the seat back under you with the heel technique:
Q: Why not reboard directly onto the seat?
It’s too slow to get from the water directly onto the seat. It’s better to get back onto the deck asap, move the boat to a safer position, and take care of the seat later. Also, the boat will be much less stable while it is full of water, and sitting down on the deck lowers your center of gravity significantly, which helps stabilize the boat while you arm-and-back-row the water out.
Q: Why not put the seat behind you so you can just lift onto the seat and you don’t need to use your heel to kick it?
If you move the seat to the bow rather than the stern, I find it gets in the way during the reboard process, making re-entry a little less controlled. More importantly, the seat will be in the way for your arms and back rowing – you will have to sit too close to the pins to avoid the seat in the bow, and won’t be able to get a good torso swing. With the seat towards your feet, the deck is free to sit where you need to to be in a strong upper body rowing position. Either way, you have to lift your hips onto the seat, and if you use your heel to kick the seat your body weight stays still and the seat moves, rather than rocking your weight around by shifting your hips to the seat. Move the small thing, not the big thing.
Step 7: Feet secured
Once you are back on the seat, slip your feet back into the straps and secure them.
Summary of steps to reboard:
Prep the boat: right if necessary; slide the seat aft (towards foot brace); hold oars in one hand; boat positioned side to the waves and body on the wave/weather side of the boat (for steps 1-4)
Pull torso onto deck, on stomach, legs stay in water
Flip from stomach to seated, landing hips on deck between tracks
Swing feet in
Row upper body, turning bow into seas and removing water from cockpit
Hand behind you on center, lift hips, kick seat back under you
Feet back in straps, more fun ahead!
Practice! Practice a lot. Start on calm water and progress your technique to waves. Practice in water deep enough that your oar blade doesn’t hit the bottom at any point, but close enough to shore that you can swim back in case you don’t exactly master your first attempt.
This is the ultimate technique to master for coastal rowing. It is unsafe and irresponsible to row in rough water without rock-solid reboarding technique. See if you can become as quick with your reboard as a kayaker performing an Eskimo roll. Not only is a bomb-proof reboard the biggest single step towards safety that a coastal rower can take, it’s also liberating. It’s a huge weapon against the “mind-killer” of fear. And it’s just plain fun, even on calm days. On those hot, humid, windless summer days, sometimes there’s nothing better than a deep-water swim, starting with a jump off of your boat.
“I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. ”
Republished with permission: Ben Booth, Rebel Coastal Rowing.
