Coxswain, check your course!

[Woxbox]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtXKr_8wFY0

[MiddleAgesMan]

That was great! :)

Lot's of other "fail" videos on there, too. Here's my fav:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ru1l2gN88&feature=channel

Here's proof that laughter is the best medicine: I keep a log of my blood pressure and had two readings over a thirty minute period that were way high. After watching a few of those "fail" videos (and ROTFLMFAO) I checked it for the third time--blood pressure was down about 40 points on the high side and 20 on the low. :)

[WX]

Classic.

[Vince Brennan]

Wot WUZ that buggar finking of?

[MiddleAgesMan]

Wow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQLmHKlmiE&feature=channel

[rbgarr]

Been there, done that (as a competitive rower) and it's awful. The coxswain seated in the stern cannot see directly ahead around the crew. Those guys are big, have broad shoulders and the cox is small and hunched down to minimize wind resistance. (Four oared boats with cox have gone to prone seating positions in the bow for the cox.) In an eight he or she has to lean way out to see what's straight ahead, and that throws off the balance of the boat, a really bad thing to do in a race.

Avoiding that accident was in large part the judge's duty since the cox obviously couldn't see a tall narrow object directly in the boat's path even though he leaned out to see what the judge was talking about. Even if the cox had realized the boat was headed for the piling at the moment the video started and he tried to turn or call for the crew to stop rowing and 'hold water hard' I think it may still have hit. Those boats turn slowly and it's hard to stop them fast from a racing pace. The judge should have been much more emphatic, pulling up alongside the boat and demanding that they stop immediately. No race is worth injury and people get badly hurt that way.

Notice that one rower is in the water, probably the number two man whose oar hit the piling first. He was levered out of the boat into the path of the riggers and breaking blades of the rest of the boat.

My experience with something like that involved another shell that swept into our path just as we were entering a bridge arch. The head-on collision ripped the bow off our boat. The leading rigger/oarlock of the other boat smashed into our bow man's back (just behind me) bruising his spleen badly.

[Songololo]

This one could almost make it on to the Darwin Awards list ...

warning: no consuming beverages while watching this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT1cDOlNsss&feature=channel