The race that wasn’t (part 1 of 3)
The Celtic Challenge longboat race is rowed across the Irish Sea from Arklow Ct Wicklow to Aberystwyth in Wales. Like most crazy ventures, it started with a bet over a pint of Guiness and has since been held biennialy as a charity fund-raiser.
At a distance of nearly a hundred miles (the course was recently diverted around sandbanks, adding an extra ten miles) it is the longest open boat rowing race in the world. Teams of twelve race in relays of four rowers and one cox for a total time of 15 to 26 hours, depending on fitness and weather conditions. Change-overs are organised with the smoothness and choreography of pitstops. Last year, only 43 seconds separated the winning Arklow team from the Aberystwyth runners-up.
Longboat rowing is one of the fastest growing sports in Wales. It is not just an elite sport. While there is a former olympic rowing coach and several top athletes in the Welsh league, the majority of rowers are in their 30s – 50s, many taking up the sport after years of little exercise.
More information about longoat rowing in Wales can be found on this website from BBC Wales.
Teams participating in the challenge are grouped into men’s, ladies’, mixed and veterans. For one of the mixed teams in this year’s race, the age distribution ranged from 16 to 60. Starting times are spaced so that every team has a shot at the trophy.
This year, my sister was taking part in the Challenge. She lives in the idyllic village of Borth, near Aberystwyth, which is essentially a narrow street between the sheep-speckled hills and the sea, lined with pebble houses, cafés and fish-and-chip shops. In Borth, there isn’t much to do, except running – and rowing. Sceptic at first, she soon caught the bug and now, after months of intense training, she would row across the Irish Sea.
I stared at her e-mail in disbelief. This, I had to see. Using my credentials as a budding travel writer, I invited myself along for the ride and sent off queries to as many local papers as I could find with the view to sell the story on to weekend supplements and magazines. If any of them would bite, it was to be my first professional freelance gig.
I found a space with the Dale club, home of Paul Brant, Secretary of the Welsh Longboat Rowing Association and a man brimming with enthusiasm for his sport. We would meet in the ferry port of Fishguard at midnight.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked my husband.
“Sure. It isn’t as if I am rowing, is it?” I snapped back irritably.
I wasn’t driving either, as I have no license. To his credit, John drove from Stirling in Scotland to the tip of the Pembrokeshire coast without a word of complaint.
At the ferry terminal at midnight there were a few trailers with boats, but no sign of the Dale people. We settled in the lounge to wait. A gaggle of college rugby players dressed in drag and swigging fom cans of cider were mooning against the windows. It looked to be an interesting night.
At one a.m. we spotted the rear-lights of a minibus with trailer disappearing down the road in the wrong direction. When the bus finally found its way to the ferry terminal, it turned out that it did not belong to the Dale club.
By two a.m. boarding was nearly completed. There was still no sign of our contacts, just a forlorn Volvo in the car park with the driver trying to keep himself awake with 95p vending machine coffee.
Half an hour before the scheduled sailing time, the Dale minibus finally pulled up. Despite the late hour, the team was as fresh as the morning dew, chatting excitedly about the weekend ahead. They were not worried about missing the ferry, they had done this before. We still had to queue for a good hour before we finally trundled onto the looading deck.
Denni