ROWING: Matt's got the measure of 'Big Red ' all right

ANENDRA SINGH
She's big, blushing red and, dare I say it, ugly. And, understandably, no one at the Hawke's Bay Rowing Club wants to touch her with a barge pole.
She's the club's single-scull vessel dubbed "The Red Boat" or "The Big Red" and has club stalwarts and officials scratching their heads to trace her humble roots. Is she from England or from the defunct Central Hawke's Bay Rowing Club?
The jury's still out on that one but what SportToday knows for sure is that Big Red does "weigh a ton", wears a crimson skirt and, for the first time in her 30-plus-year existence, Matt McGovern, of Napier, has stroked her to line honours.
In last Saturday's annual New Year's Regatta at Clive River, club member McGovern won the regatta's 1500m single-scull race after out-rowing six others in the field in the nine-metre, 25kg boat.
"I was last off the start and it took a good 300 to 400 metres to get the Big Red moving to full speed," said the 21-year-old Otago University PhD physics student, who is back home for the Christmas holidays.
Tradition has it that the boat is handed to every novice rower at the club because her weight and stability ensure she won't go belly up easily.
"I don't know anyone who would go near it. I'm probably the most senior rower there but when I went to training all the good boats were taken, so I'd been training in it for a week before the race," the former Napier Boys' High School pupil said.
Many layers of fibre-glass coating on cumbersome Big Red mean even a strapping McGovern needs coach Chris Morgan to help him carry her to the water on training nights.
"I fell over a couple of times as a novice and had to swim to the banks to get back in," said McGovern, relieved he won't have to use her again as he has started training with the senior Hawke's Bay men's eight team for the national championship in Twizel, North Otago, in March.
Club patron Tony Bone, of Havelock North, believes Big Red is probably one of the two Sims boats he ordered from England in the 1960s.
"All the boats in those days were made from timber (such as 2.5mm thick veneer of cedar) and a brand new one would have weighed about 36 pounds (about 16kg)," the 67-year-old businessman said.
Knocks from logs or rough handling resulted in the light and fragile boats developing leaks. Consequently varnishing and fibre-glass coatings were vital.
Bone, who still occasionally sculls in the mornings at Clive, believes technique is what makes a good sculler and the significance of weight is minimal.
Fellow stalwart Tony Austin, 75, of Hastings, suspects that the defunct CHB club may have gifted the boat among other gear once Lake Hatuma dried up almost two decades ago.
"It belonged to a CHB sculler but I don't remember his name. It's been more of a training boat and workhorse because it's easier to balance," said former rower and administrator Austin, who was part of the victorious Bay team that won the national lightweight eight title for five consecutive years in the 1970s.
Bay coach Dick Tripp is now keen to find a trophy, paint it red and present it to any rower who wins a race in The Red Boat.
"We'll probably run it like the Boss Rooster which is competed for at the nationals in the men's coxes four championship race," said Tripp, who intends to engrave McGovern's name on the trophy.
The Boss Rooster was borne out of intense regatta rivalry as early as 1897 on Picton Harbour. A rooster shape was cut out of a sheet of tin and over time became the symbol of four-oared supremacy.
The winners to this day are expected to paint their club colours completely over a wooden replica of the Boss Rooster or forfeit a keg of beer to the losers.
"A Hawke's Bay crew (cousins Colin and Ron Dockary, Ken Waite and Herald Wall) won the Boss Rooster twice in 1950 and 1951. I can imagine how many times it has been painted over," Tripp said.