Day 37 – Surf’s up
it seems unlikely that ocean rowing boats would be able to surf and yet that’s exactly what Oceans Elite have been able to do recently. To be able to surf an ocean rowing boat needs some various elements to come together.
Firstly you need waves. Sounds obvious right, but they need to be big enough for an ocean rowing boat to use. This also means that the period (distance between wave peaks) cannot be too small. Waves over 3m are about perfect and with a period of at least 10 seconds allows for decent conditions. The waves then also need to be coming from the right direction. There’s no point in surfing north if you’re trying to get west.
The boat setup and weight then also have to be near perfect to be able to get the boat up out of the water and onto a wave. If a boat is too heavy it will just not be able to get up to the speed needed to jump onto a wave and rowers will watch in despair as the waves go past without picking up the boat.
It’s clear from Ocean’s Elite’s speed that they have had some perfect surfing conditions recently and have been enjoying the extra speed which it offers. Rowing Stones have yet to mention surfing but they have had a bit of of a breakthrough with the watermaker which is now operating perfectly. We’ll do some testing when it gets back to find out what’s gone on but if it works and the crew are happy then who are we to argue?
