New Boat Boosts Crimson Lightweights

Three weeks before its national championship regatta, the Harvard lightweight crew was still two seconds behind season-long rival Yale. But on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J. on June 2, the lightweights won the national title over the Elis by a second—in a boat they had begun rowing just one week earlier.

Harvard’s interest in the King boats, designed by former Harvard boatman Graeme King and produced by the fledging company Elite Boatworks, peaked when Jim Crick ’88, President of Elite Boatworks and former Harvard rower, brought Elite’s fifth boat to Cambridge.

The Crimson had been rowing in a Resolute boat up until the weekend before the Intercollegiate Rowing Association’s National Championship. Harvard tried rowing Elite’s King for four days, including a practice during which the Resolute was taken out for comparison.

“Jim called to ask if we wanted to try it,” said Harvard lightweight Coach Charley Butt. “We were still two seconds behind Yale and it was a new boat so we thought we should look at it.”

After Butt’s crew rowed the King for a few days, Harvard bought the new boat just a few days before the final race of the season.

“We thought it was more stable and we knew that it didn’t weigh more,” Butt said. “The flow off the stern was minimal and the boat slipped through the water instead of plowing through. But the comfort of the rowers was the determining factor.”

Stability and speed are two canceling factors in terms of boat design. The lower a boat sits in the water, the more stability and water friction ensues. So as one increases a boat’s stability, one decreases the boat’s speed.

“The King has a very fast design and it’s very easy to row,” Crick said. “It has a very stable platform as well as being quick. The trade-off in boat production is whether the boat is fast or stable. Graeme, in his brilliance, created a balance between the two.”

The King certainly didn’t slow the lightweights. In the Grand Final, Harvard took the crown with a time of 5:46.65 over Yale’s 5:47.52. But whether it was the actual design of the boat or the comfort of the rowers that gave the Crimson the extra push is indeterminable.

“The saying is that it’s the horses, not the chariot,” Crick said. “Harvard had been rowing incredibly well as it was, and the boat didn’t get in their way.”

“Who’s to say that one boat is better than another?” Butt mused. “To say that it’s better by two seconds is to say that it’s better by 1/100 second per stroke. And how can you determine 1/100 per stroke? The oarsmen felt comfortable in the King and that’s why we used it.”

Though Elite is a relatively new boat company, the designs it uses date back decades, to the wooden creations of King.

Originally from Australia, King served as a boatman for Harvard in the ’70s. He became an expert in slender hull theory and an engineer with wooden boat designs that are still used today.

“The King is a highly evolved design,” Crick said. “Graeme King has been building wooden boats since 1965. We rowed in wooden Kings in the ’80s.”

Crick’s collegiate rowing career began as a coxswain for the Harvard heavyweights in 1984, under current Coach Harry Parker, who just completed his 39th season of reign.

“It was the heyday of heavyweight crew,” Crick said. “We had a great run back then. We won the [Eastern] Sprints three times. We were national champions twice. We also went to [the Henley Royal Regatta] a couple times. We raced in the Grand Challenge in ’87 and the Ladies Plate in ’86. We also went to the World University Games in ’87. I was lucky to be there with some very good, talented rowers.”

When Crick graduated in 1988, he continued to work in the rowing world. He coached the Tufts crew, the Vermont women’s crew and served as the head coach at union. All the while, Crick worked on building better boats.

“I never quite got out of the sport,” Crick said. “I kept trying but I never succeeded. I kept rebuilding boats and I realized that I liked building more than coaching.”

And a new company was born. Elite Boatworks launched on Oct. 20, 2000 at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Cambridge and the first boat hit the water last April. Since then, the boats have spread to Cambridge and beyond.

“Crews that would not normally look at a new boat look at them after other crews start using them,” said sophomore lightweight Alex Binkley. “That’s the way it is with new technology in rowing. One crew starts using it and the other crews start.”

Binkley, who rowed last season in the first freshman lightweight boat, is a veteran rower who is expanding his niche in the sport by designing boats of his own.

“I’ve rowed a lot and I like building things,” Binkley said. “I’ve learned a lot about the physics of the boat. I used to think, ‘OK, the thing’s floating, I’m glad. Oh, the boat’s nice and stiff,’ but I never knew why.”

Binkley, for his sake, has since learned the cause of such phenomena. He has been building his own single since his senior year in high school, when he began the task as a senior project. In exchange for space and materials, Binkley started working at Stillwater Designs, where he found the mold for his single.

“My single was a mold that a boat aficionado took off a wooden boat in Worlds in 1974,” Binkley said. “The design of those wooden boats is so good that you can just use the mold from them to make fiberglass or carbon boats.”

Binkley’s 25-foot creation is made out of carbon instead of fiberglass because though carbon is more expensive, it is also lighter. After over a year of work, it is almost ready to hit the water.

“Right now, I’m practicing welding until I’m confident enough to build the riggers,” Binkley said. “I have to paint the boat, put in the foot stretchers and build the riggers.”

Once his single is complete, Binkley hopes to race it in the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta on Martindale Pond in Ontario, Canada. But after that, his boat production career is anything but set.

“I have no idea what I want to do,” Binkley said. “When I started school, I definitely thought about trying to design and build boats and I’m still thinking about it today. It’s my summer job now anyway and I’ll see where it takes me.”

The rowing world may have brought in new boats and new builders since Crick’s days of rowing, but Harvard brought home this year’s national title with a boat design from his era.

“Kings were a treat for us in the ’80s so it was fun to take it back for Charley to row,” Crick said. “And then for Harvard to win nationals—it was a lot of fun for all of us.”