By David Stookey

What's a nice person like you doing in a boat like that? Those who go places in seaworthy boats-Whitehalls, surfboats, dories, guideboats, recreational shells and the like - occasionally hear this comment from their rowing brethren, the ones whose waterline never exceeds 20 inches, whose speed seldom drops below 8 knots, and who aren't on the water after 9:00 a.m. Yes, Virginia, there is another sport out there, and it too is called rowing. Open-water rowing. Here's how a few rowers found it.

Charlie Parks

"I needed more of a purpose, somewhere to go, new scenery while I rowed." That's the main reason that Charlie took a shot at open-water rowing. And what a shot it was. Charlie decided that he wanted to row the inside Passage from Skagway, Alaska back home to Seattle.

"After four years of rowing in eights and fours in high school, including two trips and a win at the Junior National Championships, I rowed on and off at the University of Washington. The sport is very satisfying in one way, but boy can it be boring!" To put more scenery in his rowing, last year Charlie bought a 17-foot Whitehall replica, with graceful sheer and wineglass transom, and installed sliding seats, short outriggers, and two hand-operated bilge pumps. He asked oncept II to make up three different length oars, each with adjustable length handles. As the bow and stern stations had different distances between the oarlock pins, this allowed Charlie a wide range of oar lengths to use for different conditions and differing rowing partners.

All told, Charlie had several partners during his 1,100-mile passage, rowing with him from five days to three weeks. "Originally I wanted one person to go for the whole trip, but I couldn't recruit anyone. I'd estimated it could be twelve weeks, and no one could get away for that long. In the end I settled for a series of partners, and it worked out real well. In fact, we had more to talk about on the trip that way, and now I've got seven people to reminisce with."

And what reminiscences! Bears on land, bears swimming alongside, minks, seals, eagles. Seven-foot seas and rocky campsites. Reduced rations when bad weather slowed them. Days without seeing another soul. And the taste of burgers the few times they came to a town. Is it to be open-water or flat-water rowing for Charlie from now on? "Probably both. They're different, but each is very satisfying."

Rob Canavan

Rob spends most of his summer at the beach. A member of the Brigantine City Beach Patrol since his teens, Rob grew up blowing a whistle, swimming, practicing CPR - and rowing. The South Jersey lifeguard patrols rely heavily on rowing boats, and several times a day Brigantine Beach launches one of its 17-foot Van Duyne Surfboats through the breaker to rescue swimmers in trouble. Between the towns and cities along the coast rowing rivalries have grown up, and the lifeguard patrols race each other every week all summer long.

On a hazy July evening last summer, Rob and his Brigantine teammates drove the few miles south through Atlantic City to Longport for the week's inter-beach races. The swimming event is a half-mile out through the surf and back to the beach. The rowing events include a mile doubles row and a 1,000 foot singles row, both in the same 350-pound surfboat. All courses begin with a running start on the beach, turn round an offshore buoy, and finish on the beach again.

Rob and his partner of five years, Paul Savell, won the doubles handily that evening in 11-28. "We know the water pretty well. We're still beating younger guys with better erg scores, not because we're pulling harder but probably because we know how to get off the beach and out through the surf, we know how to hold a straight course, how to turn, and how to finish." Finishing can be spectacular. When rescuing swimmers, the boats are brought carefully in through the surf backwards, bows always into the breakers. But racing, the competitors drive them right through the surf onto the beach. For the singles event, Rob was the only doubles rower to go out on the water again. All his competitors were fresh, and most of them were heftier. Rob finished second, one second behind the winner.

One characteristic that makes Rob different from most other competitors on the beach that evening: he is also a crew coach and a former U.S. National Team member. Rowing in Vesper eight in 1990 and '91, Rob won the Senior National Championships. He also competed for the U.S. in the Pan American Games in Cuba in 1991. And before that he rowed on the Temple University varsity heavyweight crew for two years, as a lightweight. "They gave scholarships only to heavyweights," explains Rob, "so I rowed up."

Today Rob is head coach of the Georgia Tech program and rows in masters sculling events. Will he keep up both flat-water and surf rowing? "I'll tell you, it keeps me young. Competing as a lifeguard keeps me motivated to stay in shape and work out. It would be very easy, after teaching and coaching all day, just to go home instead of working for an hour-and-a-half in my single as well."

Rainer Storb

When I was growing up, I wanted to row in my home town in Germany, but all the rowing was an hour away and I couldn't get there," says Dr. Rainer Storb. It was almost three decades later and six thousand miles away that Rainer took up rowing. "When we moved to a house on Lake Washington in Seattle, I bought an Alden Ocean Shell. I need exercise when I get home at night, to put work out of my mind. The Alden was stable enough to go out in most weathers."

Rainer is a physician at the Hutchinson Cancer Center and a faculty member at the University of Washington. He was one of a three-person team whose leader won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1965 for work on bone marrow transplants. When the Nixon Administration was thinking of closing the hospital where Rainer was working in 1971, he and others founded the Hutchinson. The center, with 2500 employees now one of the largest cancer centers in the world, is moving this year to a lake-front location near the University of Washington. I'll be rowing to work every day!" says Rainer.

Although he entered the sport through open-water rowing, Rainer gradually extended his interests. After the Alden came a Maas Aero. Then a Maas 24. "Every few years, I wanted more performance," he says. In addition to his evening rows from his backyard, Rainer discovered Sound Rowers, a local open-water racing organization. He was soon competing on their circuit of a dozen races each season, and he and his wife started organizing the flagship contest, the annual race across Puget Sound.

In 1995, Rainer's quest for outright speed led him to buy a Maas single shell, and he entered the world of flat-water racing. Eventually moving to a Hudson single, Rainer won U.S. Rowing's Northwest Regional in 1996 in the 60-65-year-old age group. "One should never feel too old to learn. In my profession, I need to learn every day."

Victoria Murden

There was nothing gradual about Victoria Murden's move from the top echelon of sculling to the big time in open-water rowing. She simply sent in her entry form for the Transatlantic Rowing Race. A veteran of eights and singles since she rowed at Smith College in the early 80's, Tori's rowing career has been beset by injuries. A broken wrist kept her from competing her senior year in college. By 1992, after training with Peter Sparhawk, Igor Gringko, and Alex Machi, she was competing nationally as a sculler and tried out for the national team. Enroute to the New Jersey selection event, she was in a car crash that totaled the car, destroyed her two boats, and shook her up. Still she managed to borrow a boat, make it through the time trials and the heats, and qualify for the repechage. At that point she learned that Michele Knox had lost her riggers, and offered her own, bowing out of her race. Michele went on to place second be selected for Barcelona, while Tori went to the hospital and discovered that she had two broken ribs and a chipped tibia from the car accident.

The same sort of determination that got Tori into the Olympic selection trials has served her well in other endeavors. She has summitted famous peaks on five continents, was the first woman to ski to the South Pole, has kayaked in Alaska, Kenya, and the Indian Ocean, served as chaplain at Boston City Hospital, and currently oversees city initiatives to revitalize Louisville's most distressed neighborhoods. What more natural than for Tori to be in one of the thirty rowing boats that set off from the Canary Islands last October for Barbados.

With her rowing partner Louise Graff, an experienced expedition kayaker, Tori trained for a year, built AMERICAN PEARL, the 23' one-design boat required for the race, equipped it with some innovative rigging for their sculls, and used their expedition experience to assure 6,000 calories per day, adequate sleep, and protection from the elements. Setting off from Tenerife with the fleet, Tori was again dogged by health problems, in this case a viral infection that kicked in the first day out and left Tori dehydrated and delirious during the two days Louise rowed them back toward land and radioed for help. After five days in the hospital, with doctors assuring Tori she had survived a near miss, the women set out again only be defeated by a technical malfunction.

Where does open-water rowing fit in Tori's life after this? "I'm excited and frustrated. I want to do the Atlantic, one way or another. Of course, I'll continue Masters sculling - I've got some titles to defend - but I hope to find a way to row AMERICAN PEARL across to Europe this summer."

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David Stookey has rowed all his life. His passages cover the entire coast of New England, including crossings of the Bay of Fundy, Nantucket Sound, and Cape Cod Bay. He is the editor and publisher of Open-Water Rowing, a newsletter that covers cruising, racing, adventuring and messing about in seaworthy rowing boats, fixed- or sliding-seat. Open-Water Rowing also maintains a schedule of open-water events at openwater.com.