Single Scullers Throng Charles As Season Opens

Single scull rowing, long the most popular individual sport in the college, has this year achieved new heights with Weld Boat House, home of the waterbugs, handling as many as 600 rowers in the course of a day.

Spring weather and tepid breezes have called the would-be rowers down to the intersection of Boylston and Memorial in droves, and the river is dotted with scullers with various degrees of proficiency. The embryonic Burks soon realize that rowing the little shell calls for probably more exact form than is required in any other sport.

Shells in Five Classes

The individual shells are divided into five classes at present, ranging from wherries 24 inches wide to singles with a beam of only 10 inches.

K. Blake Dennison, sculling coach, hopes to simplify the system of classification so that next spring there will be but three types of boats in the graduating system, namely wherries, compromises, and single shells.

Races in May

Scheduled for the middle of May is a single regatta which will give a good chance to every sculler because of the breadth of the classification. There will be wherry, comp and novice singles races over a half-mile course from Weeks bridge down the river. Both junior and senior single races are planned which will be of three-quarters and full mile length respectively.

The senior singles race will be run from the Cottage Farm Bridge to a point just short of the M.I.T. dinghy boathouse. Prizes in all of these competitions are tiny model singles which are made from wood and cloth to exact scale during the winter by the members of the coaching staff and painted in Harvard colors.

Time Limitations

The tremendous volume of participants in rowing is handled by Weld efficiently because of strict limitations on the time for which a boat may be used; 45 minutes is the longest. By enforcing several simple rules, the coaches are able to avoid accidents and collisions with eight-oar crews and with the other individual boats to a great extent.

Another activity which contributes to the bustle at Weld is fifteen House crews that keep their boats at Weld and row from there in the afternoon.

Constantly in progress during the summer is the repairing, refurbishing and improving of design of the boats in the boathouse. Because the boats sometimes go out 20 or 30 times in a day, Blake has been able to study effects of wear, and to develop some revolutionary improvements to add strength without weight.

Each winter when the ice has closed the river, Blake and his assistants are at work in the workshops, turning out four new boats per winter, and repairing the ravages of the summer's wear on those which have been used.