Meet Gloucester Gig Rowers (Massachusetts)

Our club was formed in 2001 by Ann Banks. There’s also an inspiring pre-history dating back to 1985 with a group of women purchasing a gig and racing in international races, outlined here: https://www.gloucestergigrowers.com/public-pages/aboutus

The club evolved organically over its early years, and in recent years there has been remarkable new interest. As a roughly 140-person club, there are currently over 80 people on our waiting list. We continually try to grow in a careful way.

 

Our overarching goal is to maintain the supportive, inclusive, and healthy energetic culture that seems to be the mark of all the gig rowing clubs we’ve encountered, both here in the US and in our wonderful experiences with UK and other clubs. Clearly, we will likely continue to grow, but not at the expense of that core value.

 

We can start by reiterating the wonderful culture that we’ve maintained. Beyond that, we might say it has been adventure of continuous improvement and innovation, with the following items in the past few years:

• a closer relationship with our host organization Maritime Gloucester
• coaching towards better technique in league with other club coaches, including major local sliding seat clubs
• club scrimmages
• harbour clean-up rows, and serving the Maritime Gloucester community
• sending emissary crews to Scilly and the Great River Race and the World Skiffie Championships
• welcoming visiting crews and individual rowers from the UK, Germany, and other countries
• physical innovations on our campus, such as this fantastic new oar shed.

We would be remiss not to mention the great gatherings organized by our Social Committee — a big part of our culture.

There are physical limits on dockage in our great home at Maritime Gloucester — a key part of our culture here in Gloucester Harbor — that will probably constrain us to a certain size, yet it’s encouraging to have all this interest. It’s a nice conundrum to be faced with.

If you know the film perfect storm, the dock the guys row from is where the film was made. Ten pound island and the dog bar are all familiar rowing land marks.

We have just built a new oar shed on the dock which is amazing and has been designed with social distancing in mind so oars can be collected without being squeezed in together.

It was built by Clem Courcy, Bart Shick and Ben Steele

Have a look at this!

Thank you Michael Leviseur for this information and Janet Rice for the photos.