Rough Water

Rough water is pretty much my thing in coastal rowing. It’s what drew me to coastal rowing originally, and it’s what keeps me inspired. When I look out at the sea, I can’t help but visualize myself finding the sweet lines of playful descent on the breakers or imagining the leaping flood of energy that pulls me over their ephemeral peaks. I’m drawn to get out there and feel.

Rowing in large waves is an emotional experience. It’s a mind-altering stimulation. Joy mixes with adrenaline—a thrilling cocktail that creates a state that might be described as revelatory ecstasy (using Oxford’s second definition of ecstasy of course, which is: “an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state, originally one involving an experience of mystic transcendence”). 

This “mystic transcendence” is the most profound effect of rowing in very large waves. Bombing a boat through wild frothy peaks blasts every last shred of mundane thought from my head. There’s an instant clarity that a temple full of Zen monks would throw down their robes for. Things happen fast out there. With no room for thought, I become merely a being intertwined with its environment. There is a purity to wave riding which is primal and beautiful: it’s an intimate connection with the world. Perhaps it's even akin to the Shamanic experience of entranced immersion in nature - an immersion so deep that the world feels magic again, and the ocean alive. And when we feel the world that powerfully, we free ourselves from a life of sensory dullness. To the extent that it provokes such liberating escapes, we could characterize rough water rowing as a revolutionary act.  

By rough, I mean rough. Like overhead breakers, whirlpool rip currents, howling winds. Or, it could also mean venturing out of the harbor for the first time. “Rough” is a fluid concept.

World Rowing/FISA has done an amazing job in promoting the sport of coastal rowing. Coastal racing is hitting the 2022 Youth Olympic Games and is being proposed for the Paris Summer Games 2024. In addition, they organize tours that highlight the social and exploratory aspect of coastal rowing. Racing and touring are two important manifestations of coastal rowing. But I hope another channel develops: a “counter-culture” of rowing rebels who take to the sea with the radical quest for experiencing big waves and challenging conditions. 

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Republished with permission: Ben Booth, Rebel Coastal Rowing.