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It's been a great weekend on the water for rowers in the now-international Castle to Crane race. It's a highlight of Scottish Coastal Rowing, held over 13 miles on the River Clyde. This year, because of Covid, rowers were invited to compete by rowing five-mile time trials on their home waters. So the competition ranged from entries in Tasmania and Melbourne, to Spain, Holland, across the UK including lots from the West Country as well as Scotland, and Ireland. Black Rocks member, Chris Mitchell, asked if he could represent the club in his Liteboat - a modern coastal rowing single scull, modified for fixed seat rowing. His first attempt on Friday started in Kinghorn Bay, went west to Burntisland Harbour, turned round and headed back to the start circumnavigating the Black Rocks en-route. Conditions became quite choppy but a respectable time of 59 mins was clocked for the five miles. By Sunday, conditions were improved and calm so a second attempt was made in one of the lowest spring tides of the year. This time, a combination of hugging the shore around Pettycur Beach, then joining the main Forth channel for the return (oh and some hard rowing) knocked ten minutes off the first time. 49 mins 49 secs was the 11th fastest of all 119 race entries, the highest placed 50+ solo rower and highest placed "one rower boat less than 5m". "Fair chuffed" was Chris's verdict on the event, especially glad to have started Black Rocks Rowing Club's competitive record with a respectable performance. Now we just need to build our skiff.

Black Rocks Rowing Club has proudly joined the Virtual RowAround Scotland - a COVID-era landbased relay in which a virtual baton is working its way around the coast of Scotland to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Scottish Coastal Rowing. We took over the baton from Kinghorn CRC at Burntisland Sailing Club and transported it to Dalgety Bay, a sea journey of around 5 miles. Joel Mason, club chair, RowAround Scotland Poet-in-Residence and man of many other talents, took the baton aboard the Burntisland Flyer, a vintage Indian electric bike, just one of his many inventions, for its first night in the town Next day, the leg to Dalgety Bay, set off with another invention, the Rolling Rowing Machine, powered by Joel and coxed by Chris. https://youtu.be/UF8itYW2EJA It was a great start, even if the first corner was a little challenging. However Brian, Chris and Chris M then took to the Fife Coastal Path on foot, escorted on four feet by Islay. Last week’s storm had partly washed away the Starleyburn Bridge but hasty repairs by Fife Coast & Countryside Trust had reopened the path. At Aberdour, Elisa joined us and then en route to Dalgety Bay, David from the fledgling Aberdour skiff project joined in together with another four feet. Aberdour have a small steering group of about seven members doing the spade work of creating a club. Finlay, and 13 month old Lily, also joined in for the last leg to the Donibristle House Quay at Dalgety Bay, where a warm greeting was waiting from North Queensferry CRC. Here we concluded with a double handover, from Black Rocks to Aberdour and then Aberdour to North Queensferry. All very virtual, but little did we now that at that very moment a virtual SCRA committee was putting the finishing touches to an announcement that is to get us all back on the water. Handover from Black Rocks to Aberdour Handover from Aberdour to North Queensferry Next year we’ll be back again for RowAround Scotland for Real in a Black Rocks Skiff – fingers crossed. Report written by Chris Mitchell "The Virtual RowAround Scotland (VRAS) began on 25th March 2020 and will continue in real time around the coast until such time as restrictions are eased and we can all leap into our skiffs and complete the cyber circumnavigation for real" Click here to read Chris's full article on the RowAround Scotland Website

COVID-19 may be with us for a while longer, but club business goes on. Some members of our steering group recently met in the now-clichéd 'Zoom' format; topics included everything from the first tentative steps in the direction of remobilising our build to the Row Around Scotland event in which Black Rocks will be participating later this month. Originally conceived as an on-water baton relay around Scotland in celebration of 10 years of Scottish Coastal Rowing, the event has had to reformat as a virtual row ... a 'dry run', if you will. Kinghorn Coastal Rowing Club will be handing the baton to us on Wednesday 19th August, and we'll have until Thursday evening to walk it to Donibristle Bay for the handover to North Queensferry Coastal Rowing Club. We will need to coordinate carefully, as we'll need to observe all the relevant advice from the Scottish Government as regards social distancing and the permissible sizes of gatherings. Details will be circulated to members shortly; anyone else who would like to get involved is welcome to get in touch.

Alas, COVID-19 has forced us to push pause on our build. Nonetheless, it’s as good a time as ever to reflect on the past few months, during which we’ve been making steady progress on the St Ayles Skiff build. After final levelling of the build frame, and ensuring that the moulds were all on straight, our members got to work sanding and gluing up the four ribs. Next, the strips of douglas fir that make up the curved ‘aprons’ or ‘inner stems’ at either end of the boat’s backbone were planed down to the correct size, and laminated together using a mould lent by Kinghorn; in the picture, we see Joel and Bill adjusting some of the 20 or so clamps necessary to hold everything in place while the glue sets. The next step will be to mount the ribs and aprons to the build frame and glue the hog (the inner part of the keel) along the top, creating a skeleton upon which the planks will then be laid. That, however, will need to wait until we can safely reconvene. In the meantime, we hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy.