Newport Chase… The fog Regatta

10 Nov 2016

CSULB Novice Women beach launching for their race before it was canceled. Photo by Jasmine McGill

By Sean McCrea

Men’s Varsity Rower

Saturday November 5 was the start of a 3 week, 4 Regatta stretch for Long Beach State Rowing. If you did not have something to cut the fog with this past weekend, you would have mist the action. On a day that brought out a number of crews including Orange Coast College, Loyola Marymount University, UCLA, UC Irvine, and even Masters crews from Newport Seabase and NAC, only two races got to finish. The men’s varsity and novice 8’s. And, there were even a few boats in the men’s novice event that were told to stop before finishing! Unfortunately for the women, and the 4+’s, their races were canceled due to extreme fog conditions as they were warming up on the course.

Since the men’s races started earlier they were able to finish before the fog was too thick, but not before some excitement. Novice rower Ehab Elrashidy, 7 seat of the Novice A boat, had an equipment malfunction during warm-ups. His foot stretchers snapped off and were not repairable by the time the race started. So the novice A boat was essentially rowing with seven rowers instead of eight. Ehab said he tried rowing the best he could without the use of his foot stretchers but the breakage left the Novice men severely handicapped. Given the circumstances, they did fairly well, getting third overall in their event, trailing only OCC’s A and B boats. Their final time was 17:27 for roughly a 5k race. The Novice B boat finished 5th of 7 with an 18:56. On top of Ehab having equipment issues, the UC Irvine Novice A ended their race in an even worse disaster, crashing their boat around the bridge on the back half of the race course, leaving them unable to finish.

Men’s Varsity were a bit luckier. Given that their race was the first of the day they had some, but less issues with fog on the race course. The varsity A boat ended up getting 6th of 12 with a time of 15:34. They were bunched up between UCLA B(4th at 15:28 ), LMU A(5th at 15:32), and OCC B(7th at 15:36) all finishing withing seconds of the next boat. OCC A, UCI A, and UCLA A took 1st through 3rd, in that order. The Varsity B boat was a bit late to the starting line and ended up taking off at the beginning of the Novice event. Their race was going well until an official on the course told them to stop and that the race was called off. The strange part about that was that they were given an official time and placed 12 of 12 in the varsity event.

Newport Chase and the fog left something to be desired for LBS Rowing and they will look make the best of some mist opportunities in the upcoming weekend. On November 13, in San Diego, will be the 2016 San Diego Fall Classic Regatta. Men and Women’s varsity and novice will be competing in multiple events including 8+’s, 4+’s, pairs, and a double! It should be a blast.