Yes, there is still more to be covered. This one will deal with the nuts and bolts... literally. Equipment is always interesting. What one elite values with dear life, another regards as the worst piece of equipment ever created. Some believe vehemently that it will make or break you, while others think its much less a role player as long as the operator is sufficient.

Here you can view a shot down the boat yard, this is only half of the yard. The other half of the yard is behind me. Keep in mind the racks you see on the left and right are only the middle racks. Another set of racks lie on the outside of these.

You name it, it was there. Hudson, Fillipi, Empacher ("You've got to hand it to the germans, they build great [boats]!"), even Drew Harrison and Couchetti made it to this shin dig. It amazes me how many boats made it, considering that most boats had to be shipped via container halfway around the world. Only one major brand is actually located in this region of the worlds. It is the Father company of what we call WinTech, who recently bought out Quantum. All their shells are manufactured here in the Eastern Pacific (under many different brands (drew harrison, wintech, something japanese, blah blah blah).

One thing I did not know previous to this trip is that all eights competing at the world championships are required to be sectional. Here an Italian coach disassembles the Italian lwt 8 in haste. The race site cleared unusually quickly after the completion of racing due to the approach of a typhoon.

Probably the most interesting to those of you outside the engineering profession is the blade patterns. Each country has its own pattern that identifies its rowers. Earning an oar that bears a national team pattern is a symbol of pride for each rower. I attempted to compile a good collection of patterns, here are some of them where most countries are represented.


Here you have south Africa on the top and the Czech's on the bottom (forefront), most blade patterns are based off national flags, and all bear the countries national colors.















Any guesses?

Ok.. Singapore.

OK, these are harder....lets go for the top three and the bottom.

Start easy with the middle.

Yes, or wi wi. And the bottom? Ya, eich bin ein Forestviller.

Now the left one. This is a small south american country. Are you cold? Or just Chile?

Ok.. this is probably the hardest one. On the top right. You may only get this if you have seen it and love womens 1x competition, or are my fifth grade geography teacher who knew all of this flag stuff. We'll come back to a detail of this one later.

Ahh, the motherland, as shown on the top. In the middle is USA and the blue and yellow you see on the bottom is the Ukraine.

Ok, this is a big group.

I'll describe by popular country greeting.

Top: "Up Yours"

2nd from top: G'day Mate

3rd from top: Conichiwa!

Bottom: How's it goin', ehh?

I hope all is well. Comments are open at the bottom of the post if you think there is an error, etc. I will post a trivia blade later this week. I found one that I have no idea why it was there or where it came from.

Cheers.

BTW:

Belarusse