She was always elegant and very much the Grande dame of the boathouse. Her original home was Olympia, Washington but she had traveled around the country and competed in some of the great East Coast rowing classics with Philadelphia and Boston among her favorite venues. Since those heady days of competition, so much had changed for her, she felt out of place, considered almost a relic when compared to the young international upstarts who were making her house their home. In a way she envied them, how could she not; just their state of the art technology with strange and mysterious words like hyper carbon woven carbon fibers, and T-6 aluminum. It was as if they were speaking another language. Nevertheless, she wore her cuts and scrapes like a real badge of honor. It made her remember more than one well meaning young man hitting her gunwales or cracking her hull in more than one place. After all these years, epoxy could well have been her middle name. She was fitted out with handsome rigging, brass fittings and oarlocks which held her eight elegant 12 foot sweep oars. They were majestic looking oars that seemed to reach up to the sky, beautifully varnished with the blades painted a deep red with two horizontal broad white stripes. In her time, she had seen so many rowers come and go it was hard to remember one from another. Some, she sensed, already knew what they were doing and how best to work with her, they were confident but also careful and gentle knowing just how to get her effortlessly gliding across the blue waters. There were other rowers that started out each season with two left feet and seemingly determined to work against her not with her. But season after season, her boys eventually learned the art of finesse rowing as a team and propelled her across many a cheering finish line. That made her truly happy
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