The Tall Ships' Cadet Row
The Tall Ships visited New London Harbor this
July and the members of the John Gardner Traditional Small
Craft Association (JGTSCA) wanted to take part. The JGTSCA
owns two gigs. The John Gardner is a 25 foot gig built seven
years ago by a community boat building progam called Floating
The Apple. This was the first boat built in downtown Manhattan
in an old store front with total volunteer effort. There are
now over 20 such boats in existence built by different schools
and organizations. Floating the Apple donated the gig to the
John Gardner Traditional Small Craft Association. Several
JGTSCA members also brought rowing boats and Chip Eichorn
brought two boats he had built for use by life guards. Chip
builds and sells these very unique boats in New Jersey and
beyond.
The JGTSCA has been given the use of a chapter building on
the Avery Point Campus of the University of Connecticut. Avery
Point is located on a point on Long Island Sound. Just around
the corner is the Thames river that leads up to New London
Connecticut. As you can see below, the site has a small beach,
a building and yard.
Getting cadets from two of the tall ships to our site proved
a little confusing and time consuming, but eventually we got
quite a crowd of cadets from the Sagres of Portugal and the
Esmeraldo of Argentina. We had enough boats and worked out
which people were to row in which boats despite some language
difficulties.
The boats traveled up the Thames River to the Interstate
95 bridge around all of the Tall Ships and back. When the
boats got to the Esmeraldo the cadets from that ship had to
get back to duty on their ship. It wasn't all bad, they dropped
six packs of refreshment down to those in the row boats. This
meant we had less rowers than we had begun with, but it all
worked out fine. The group from the Sagres rowed back with
us and joined us in a picnic. They got permission from their
Captain to stay until fairly late in the evening. It turned
out to be quite an enjoyable event!
| 
Russell Smith checks the collection
of rowing craft as he waits for the cadets to show up. |
Rob Pittaway directs some of the boat
traffic. |
| 
The boats are ready and here come the
cadets. |
Russell's crew of cadets try to get
the idea of rowing as a team at the beginning of the
row. That's Russell at the back in the "Cleopatra
seat". |
| 
Members of the Connecticut River Oar
and Paddle Club take off toward the Thames River. |
Another crew of cadets starts the trip
up the Thames River and around the Tall Ships |
| 
This is one of the boats coming back
from the trip. The crews were very different on the
way home because the crew of one of the ships got off
in New London. |
Here Russell comes back with one crew
member in the gig, pulling an extra boat. Impressive
rowing of the gig with only two people as crew. |
>> Continue
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