Italian design gives club an edge

The sleek lines of the new Italian designed, New Zealand-made doubles are causing heads to turn at the Whangarei Rowing Club's headquarters on Hatea Drive.
The new skiffs will give the Whangarei crews who use them an edge in competition this year but president Mike Baker said the club in is no hurry to roll them out, preferring to keep them up their sleeves for the big occasions of the rowing season to come.
"They will give us a real edge when it comes to the serious competitive stuff later in the season, we won't be daunted by anyone on the water this year," he said.
Baker said at the moment they're being used as a serious "carrot" to dangle in front of the kids, who all want to take the skiffs out for a training run.
But the boats aren't for motivation purposes or for use at any old occasion - they are state of the art boats with a serious price tag of around $19,000 apiece - a price the club could never have afforded by themselves. They have the Pub Charity organisation to thank for a substantial grant that made the purchase of the boats possible.
The club is a small one by national standards - with just over 50 members with around 40 of them active rowers - but it is still pretty serious about competition.
One of the coaches, Nigel Baddeley, said many of the crews had been training through the winter to get a jump start on the others for the competition season - which starts for some of the rowers this weekend with the RF Bennett Memorial Shield at Lake Pupuke in Auckland.
The club's focus remains its secondary school age rowers, where it has had a good level of success over the years.
"That's the main focus for us, we're gearing up for the North Island Championships and the Maadi Cup but this year we're planning on a slower build-up to last season," he said.
The two biggest regattas are toward the end of the season in March and as always the club is optimistic that some of the crews from the local schools, who the club trains, can give some of the bigger "rowing" schools a hurry up at the season-defining regattas.
"Last year we were winning regattas all the way up to the Maadi Cup and then we flopped a bit once we got there, so we're planning on doing it a bit differently this time around," Baddeley said.
Only four rowers will travel to Auckland this weekend to compete, with the first major regatta of the season a week before Christmas.