Surfski Knowledge Base

Tom Halsted 5/8/2023

A coworker friend of mine (Jessica Raab-Holmgren) and her rowing partner Bill Jaquette, rowed his big, beautiful lapstrake-hulled Whitehall boat “Thurgood” in the recent La Conner Race.

Bill wrote up his version of the race, a bit of the race history, and many of his boating and boat-building adventures (he built the Thurgood).
He gave it to Jessica, and [when asked] told her it would be fine to share here, so, enjoy!
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LA CONNER RACE 2023

The Sound Rowers Open Water Rowing and Paddling Club can trace itself back to a race in 1978 around Shaw Island in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. Since then, the Club has sponsored races open to all manner of human powered watercraft at a number of locations in Western Washington. I first participated in a club event in 1992 in the race around Shaw Island in a 14-foot Cosine Wherry I had built from plans in the book, Rip, Strip, & Row, by J.D. Brown. The race was the perfect place to test out my new boat in open water on the 14 miles around the Island. Over the years I have participated in many the Sound Rower events.

My success with the Cosine Wherry led me to build another boat, bigger than the first, as every second boat must be. In the book Building Classic Small Craft, volume 1, by John Gardner I found the measurements for a 17-foot Whitehall. The Whitehall was the design of a boat that could be found all over the harbors on the eastern seaboard of the United States in the 1880s, used for hauling and transportation before engines were available. Gardner tells of Whitehalls rowing out to meet ocean vessels back in the day to arrange housing for the arriving sailors. Construction of the Whitehall turned out to be a very complicated process, but heck, I was already a boat builder and had to give it a try. The starting point was a table of offsets.

With the boat upside down, imagine slicing it horizontally from bow to stern and from port to starboard at various stations from rail to keel; then slicing it vertically from bow to stern at various stations from port to starboard. Where these lines intersect constitute the table of offsets. From the table of offsets, the boat builder draws a full-size plan, called lofting, from which the mold is built. The keel, stem, and transom are attached to the mold and planks of the boat are bent around the mold and riveted to the stem and transom and one another. This was a complicated process, and it took me a little more than two years and classes at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle and the WoodenBoat School in Maine to get it done. My Whitehall, named Thurgood after Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, became and remains one of my most important accomplishments.

Thurgood and I spent several years together rowing around and camping on all the major island in the San Juan Islands and several of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia. For most of my Sound Rower races, I used my Maas 24, Piper, a vessel along the lines of the shells and racing kayaks of the other competitors. But given the usual cold weather and occasional high winds of the February La Conner race, I started using Thurgood at this event. She and I competed happily for a number of years, sometimes just the two of us, other times with another rower. In the last three years, the laws of psychological inertia got the best of me and the likelihood of cold and windy weather together with my alternate opportunities for rowing with the Everett Rowing Association kept me away from the La Conner race, but not without some feeling of guilt. At one of our post-row trips to Starbucks, I was speaking about my Thurgood and the fun I always had at the La Conner race and Jessica Holmgren agreed to sign on board for 2023 and the momentum I needed returned.

In preparation for our trip to La Conner, I removed all the things I had stored in Thurgood during the several years she had remained idle, filed her trailer tires with air, and drove her around the block just to be sure everything was working. At 7:30 a.m. on race day, Jessica arrived at my house and with Thurgood following in the trailer we were off to the race. La Conner is a small town near the south end of the Swinomish Channel which connects the Skagit and Padilla Bays. We arrived at the boat launch to find all kinds of human powered craft, single and double rowing shells, sea kayaks, racing kayaks, and outrigger canoes, but nothing like my Thurgood. It was good to see some old friends that I had been with on the water over the years, but I did notice that recent years had taken some measure from all of us.

The Friday before our Saturday race, there were wind warnings all over Western Washington. Happily, the warnings were lowered before we were scheduled to launch, but it turned out that we would have plenty of wind to deal with. The course was seven miles, Normally, the race heads south through the Channel, out into Skagit Bay around a green dolphin number 1 (a buoy), then back to La Conner. However, with the wind that remained, the waves out In Skagit Bay were projected to be steep enough to be a hazard and the course was changed to head north in the Channel to a temporary orange buoy and return. The start and finish line remained the orange Rainbow Bridge at the south end of La Conner.

Jessica and I loaded Thurgood with all the necessities, and I backed the trailer towards the boat ramp. Launching here is difficult. The ramp is very narrow with a high dock on one side and a big drop-off on the other, and the several years since I had launched here made it quite a struggle. But with Jessica’s help and the hands lent by several bystanders Thurgood got safely launched. We climbed aboard, and pushed away, Jessica in the bow and me in the stern and after several seating adjustments, we started rowing. Thurgood is a classic fixed seat boat which was going to be a different experience for the two of us, used to having the added power of our legs from a scull’s sliding seat. However, we didn’t have to travel far before we were both able to make the necessary modifications of our stroke.

There were two starts, and we lined up for the earlier one at 9:45 with all the faster boats starting at 10:00. Our group consisted of a lot of standup paddle boards a couple of sea kayaks, and Thurgood. The horn sounded and we were off.

We slowly pulled a head of most of the paddleboards but others moved ahead not to be seen until they turned around to head back. We rowed past the town of La Conner on our starboard with large sailing and motor vessels moored at the docks, and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community on our port with the tribe’s fishing and crabbing boats waiting for their seasons followed by Swadabs Park with its three large structures in the form of the tribe’s traditional cedar hats. I was in charge of setting the stroke rate and Jessica our heading. I can’t recall ever having rowed with Jessica. At the Everett Rowing Association, they always put her in the boats with other strong rowers. Her strength and abilities were the biggest reason we were going as well as we were.

I was keeping track of our progress on my GPS watch. Aided by a substantial wind from behind, we began the race moving at 5 miles an hour. As we continued up the course, however, I became aware that we were slowing down. We were pulling just as hard and, if anything, the wind behind us was getting stronger.

There came a point where the boats ahead of us were rounding a big green channel marker and heading back toward the finish. My GPS had us less than 3 miles from the start of a 7-mile race, but who were we to question the judgments of all those ahead of us. We too rounded the mark and headed back. We hadn’t gone far when a double shell and a couple of high-performance kayaks that had started 15 minutes behind us came up the course and went swiftly past the green buoy. Oh no! We’d blown it. My first thought was to stay with those heading back. Jessica seemed to agree, and we continued to row toward the finish. It wasn’t long, however, before her conscience spoke to her, and she urged that we turn around again and row the full course. My conscience finally chimed in: We’d put so much into the race so far; we had to do the whole thing. Around we went and off on the trail of those kayaks and the double shell.

It was about another mile, but there it was, the big orange buoy and everyone ahead of us rounded it and went flying back toward the finish. Just past the buoy we pulled hard to starboard and Thurgood slowly turned and we were headed home. By the wind, now against us, had gotten stronger and the waves much steeper. I figured out why we had been slowing down during the first half of our race: The current in the Channel had been building against us slowing our progress. Happily, now it was carrying us home. Unfortunately, that current was against the wind creating some serious wave action causing Thurgood’s bow to shoot up and dive down again and again slowing our progress through the water. Fortunately, the same water that had us bobbing up and down was moving faster and faster in the increasing tidal current and we were again moving along the shore at the same 5 miles an hour that we were traveling at the start of the race.

As we proceeded toward the finish, boat after boat rowed or paddled up behind us, took a few moments to draft in our wake, stealing a little bit of our energy, then speed along. We tried to find some way to get out of the big waves. Several boats had pulled over to the west side of the Channel. We gave that a try, but I didn’t think it did us much good. As we returned to La Conner, the waves lightened up and our last mile went smoothly. The Bridge came into view and, as fast as this a heavy wooden boat would go, we pushed Thurgood hard. The horn sounded to signal that we had finished the race.

We were officially recorded as placing last with a race time of 1 hour, 43 minutes, 11 seconds, more than twice the time of the winner. Many of the competitors already had their boats on the top of their cars. Jessica’s husband, Scott, having coached the morning masters at Everett Rowing came up and saw us finish. Again with lots of help from others, we got Thurgood back on her trailer and joined the other competitors for soup and the awarding of ribbons. Jessica and I proudly accepted our first-place ribbons as first in our class.

I hope you enjoyed as much as I did -

Tom Halsted

Reivers Dustin

I remember seeing Bill over these many years at SR races. Always a gentleman with a wry way of looking at all the going's on. In this write up he refers to 'Roung Shaw origins. It's quite a story. My first exposure was fella in the 5:15 Aerobics class at the YMCA (Yay Tammy Bennett!). Pete Redpath had a favorite shirt that had “Round Shaw Row” on it. We talked about it. Sounded crazy to me. It seems some locals out there over a few beers argued sailboats vs kayaks around the island. The Shaw family organized and hosted. They had food and fun for the weekend that it happened. I did not know that was the start of SoundRowers. Those early years must have been pretty wild. I got in on the race after it was pretty well established. But it still has that anarchistic character. In fact the original family had a re-union out there long after many of them had moved away. That was a good time. They were fun people. I think Jost hosted the race during those years, but I just met the family that one time.

One of these races was the first time I got a good look at Shane Baker. This is where he got legend status at predicting local currents. Some of those pre-race arguments about which way around were dang exciting. How about the time Shane and LB (could you find two more hard-headed paddlers?) raced opposite directions and came in within seconds of each other. Or my son and I in a fast double just killing it … until I steer us into the wrong bay. Or the time those women rowers from Boston stopped their West Coast tour to do 'Round Shaw. Or the time I talked a girlfriend into doing the race the opposite way. We met halfway and stole a kiss. The guy I was racing so hard stopped paddling (Steve Bennett) and said, “Man, I can't pass you at a time like this.”.

It's big race and tricky if you don't do an overnight on Shaw. But it has a special flavor if you take time to chat with the nuts that do this race. Support SoundRowers.

Larry Bussinger

That wasn’t Shane. It was Mr Scherrer and I darn near T-boned him. Opposite directions and within a second.

Larry Bussinger