The first in a series of features by previous ERC Chairman Graham Hurley about the ERC Committee and other members who do so much to get us on the water. Find out about them, their contributions and what ‘floats their boat!’

First up – New ERC Chairman Richard

There came a moment when teacher Richard Robinson knew that the time had come to turn his back on the whiteboard and the classroom, to stow away his metaphorical board-markers and to look for a new challenge. He’d been at the British International School in New Cairo for two years. A long career teaching German, French, and EFL had given him insights into the reach and potential of language, and Egypt had beckoned him into the foothills of Arabic. ‘That was fascinating,’ he says now, ‘because it simply confirmed that everything begins and ends with communication. Whether it’s a family, or a business, or even a rowing club, you have to get people on board, you have to get people to talk to each other. That’s the only way we can ever unlock our real potential.’

…… years later, Richard is the new Chair of Exmouth Rowing Club. He’s been on the water since his primary school days as a Cub Scout at Exeter Quay. He sailed dinghies, helmed ‘whalers’, paddled kayaks, mastered the arts of slalom canoeing. At Cambridge, he eyed the River Cam and joined the Modern Linguists’ Bumps’ crew, happily named Eurofahrt VIII, quickly slipping into the stroke seat. The teacher again. Setting the pace.

 

Now, as game as ever, he must call on that marriage of raw physical effort, coupled with a slightly professorial bossiness, to put a fresh spring in the step of a club that is growing from strength to strength.  ERC sits beside one of the finest and most challenging bodies of water in the kingdom. Spring tides gallop seawards through the harbour narrows. There’s lots of stuff to hit.  Lately, after two years of lockdown, the sight of the clubs’ trusty Safran quads hauling themselves upriver has attracted a flood of new recruits and the membership has now been capped at 100.

 

‘Beyond that,’ says Richard. ‘we start running out of both boats and boat space.  There’s also an issue with the degree of attention we need to devote to each member, especially novices. They come to us expecting to be turned into proper rowers. That’s exactly what we intend to do but it takes time and a great deal of voluntary effort.’

 

Each incoming senior officer at ERC brings a fresh mission statement to the club. A while back, a fearsome Club Captain was In It to Win It.  One of his successors, conscious of the challenge of the local waters, preferred Home Safe, while a more recent Chairman proclaimed the blessings of The Big Tent, insisting that the club should offer a home to rowers of every age and every ability. Richard, after some thought, has settled on A Happy Club for All. If this sounds slightly anodyne, so be it. A big grin on every face has a long philosophical pedigree.

 

The South West has an equally long tradition of gig racing, a fiercely demanding discipline bred by long-ago pilot-crews racing to offer their services to incoming traders. Men of iron hauled heavy clinker-built pilot cutters over silly distances in often impossible weather, and that urge to be first has never died. More recently, organised racing has spread to the coastal boat community, sculling in lighter, faster boats.  Six clubs have signed up to the South West Coastal League (now simply known as the Coastal League), and this season sees the entry of a new contender for line honours in the shape of crews from the Carrick Rowing Club, at Falmouth.  To date, ERC has a lustrous record over the long summer season, but no club can afford to rest on its shelf of trophies, and so this year the battle for line honours must begin all over again.

In the classroom,’ says Richard, ‘I believed intensely in discipline, because that’s the key to trust. I know it’s a cliché but we all have to be pulling in the same direction, on the same beat, with the same determination to be faster than everyone else on the water.  Getting that message across starts with the cox. He’s the conductor of this fabulous orchestra. Get the cox right, and you’re halfway there.’

 

Technique, of course, is central to everything. The orchestra has to be in tune, and on the same page. Richard happens to have a personal loathing for the boredom of Ergo sessions but readily concedes that they can be an invaluable fitness tool. Even more important, though, is time and effort expended on the water in pursuit of that very special marriage between endorphins and a growing sense of confidence, both personal and crew-wide. ‘Nothing beats distance work with a clued-up cox in charge,’ he says. ‘Once you’ve all felt the glow of a hard ten K, nothing else will ever come close.’

 

A number of pivotal decisions lie in wait for ERC over the coming weeks and months.  They include detailed training programmes for the new Coastal League season, an enhanced emphasis on coxing programmes, plus longer-term thinking about expanding the youth membership, and laying hands on new boats.  Space at the clubhouse is fast becoming an issue but Richard is the first to acknowledge that this in itself is a symptom of the club’s success. ‘We’ve managed to build a superb management team,’ he says with a smile. ‘We have some serious expertise in a number of areas and I suspect there isn’t a challenge that between us we can’t crack.’

 

This is fighting talk, wholly welcome to a membership that appreciates involvement as well as winning, but there come moments in Richard’s hectic schedule when he needs to decompress, and those are the moments when he trailers one of the club’s single sculls onto the beach and departs for a think.  ‘Single sculling is yoga afloat,’ he says, ‘especially on waters like these. After a while, balancing the boat, making proper friends of it, comes naturally but you have to be super-aware of other traffic, of rogue sandbanks, of buoyage, and of the general clutter of river moorings. That degree of concentration, coupled with sweat and effort, is enormously liberating. Stuff just falls away, and then you’re suddenly in clear water, with nothing but a flight of Canada geese overhead and maybe a seal popping up to keep an eye on you, and its those moments that convince you that anything’s possible.’

 

This, of course, can serve as a larger metaphor, not simply for the strange magic of rowing, but for the trickier business of piloting an entire club through waters that are rarely less than turbulent. Pressed to explain further, Richard reflected on a buoy-turn in one of last season’s Coastal League race. ‘I was coxing,’ he says, ‘And there were two crews ahead, battling for the same patch of water. Me? I was watching the tide.  I took a slightly wider turn, and the river helped us out. As a result, we emerged first on the next leg. That’s exactly what I want to do with the club: to understand our natural strengths, and use them to make the right decisions at the right moment.’

 

ERC’s new Chair has taken the helm with the club at a moment of explosive change. Is he daunted? Far from it. ‘We have some great people aboard,’ he says, ‘and I’m here to get the very best out of them.’