The next ten years

Once home, the boat was parked in the backyard and never used. Cycling was my passion and with training, racing and running races with the Norwood Cycling Club there was very little time for other things like sailing.

We had a neighbour with a beach house at Goolwa which had a large shed. With four sons and a daughter, I asked if they wanted the boat as the Murray River at Goolwa is great for boating but is regularly windy and with their family, it was more likely to be used than with ours.

I gave them a quick lesson on rigging but again, the boat never saw action. After a few years, I met someone who was looking to buy a Mirror and given its lack of use, I sold it to him for the same price I paid on the condition that it get some use.

And this is when rowing started. Michael had to pick a sport at school and his mother's only advice, primarily based on the training start time of 5:30am was don't choose rowing. So Michael naturally chose rowing.

Given Deb worked at the same school, with the need to get Michael to the training and regattas she may as well get involved the admin of rowing as well.

In 2010, as a fundraiser for the school rowing, the boatshed ran a learn to row course to teach the basic skills to parents any anyone else interested in learning.
The first thing I learned was that the leg muscles used in rowing are developed in much the same way as cyclists, lesson two was that cyclists don't necessarily make good rowers, we're too metronomic. Rowers need to develop a different speed when driving, going forward to that of recovery, getting back into the drive position. Cyclists just go round at the same pace regardless.

But I was reasonably strong for my age and once the techniques of feathering the oar and correct sliding were learned, I was a bit hooked. It's almost magical when you're in an eight, you all get things right at the same time and you glide on the water. A rare occurrence but it can happen.

I was asked by a group that had been rowing together for a number of years if I wanted to join them for the Head of the Yarra that year. It's a unique time trial up the Yarra, about 200 eights on a course about 8km from the Southbank of Melbourne to the Hawthorn Rowing Club.

So with a crew with an average age around 55 (taking out one 17yo outlier), we borrowed a boat and a coxswain and managed to finish in a time that wasn't going to threaten anyone.

We kept the training up on Sundays and went back to do it again in 2011but floods meant that only the elite teams rowed the race, Michael coxing his school team to a winning time.

We went back again in 2012 and 2014 but given we came second to last both times in our category, my desire to go back had come to an end and I stopped training.

So not ten years, maybe only five but I did no on water activities for the following five years mainly due to cycling and house building, boats would have to wait.