It is with sadness that we record the passing of club stalwart and life member, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin’s involvement with the Wellington Rowing Club began in the late 1960s when is sons took up rowing.
He was very active in the club, particularly in the area of plant maintenance. He was a vice president for the club for a period in the mid 1970s and was heavily involved in the club’s centenary in 1985.
His enthusiasm for the sport continued even after his boys’ active involvement ceased. He was on the Wellington Rowing Association committee for many years and was a finishing judge at WRA regattas until the beginning of this year.
And even in that role is support for the club never diminished – he would always rejoice at Wellington crews winning, and his “red” judges flag was in fact maroon!
Kevin was 82.
The Wellington Rowing Club Corporate Rowing Regatta was held in good conditions on the 8th of August, along the Petone Waterfront.
| Overall Winners | Gen-i Men No. 2 |
| Mixed Trophy Winner | Cardno TCB |
| Men's Trophy Winner | Cardno TCB |
| Women's Trophy Winner | Police |
Well done to all involved.
Congratulations are in order for former Onslow school boy rower Tobias Wehr-Candler.
He was a member of the New Zealand 4+ that recentely competed in the World U23 championships. Tobias and his crew beat home Italy and Germany respectively to bring home gold for New Zealand.
Well Done Tobias!
The club Wellington Rowing Club constitution states that a club membership form must be completed by every rower and coxswain after attending either the first training session in a season, or the first session after June 1 every year.
A base payment of $150 is due with the application. This will be deducted from the annual subscription. We are working on giving members the ability to easily make their subscription payments via this website. But in the mean time, please fill in and return the membership form to:
| The Treasurer |
| Wellington Rowing Club |
| PO Box 3273 |
| Wellington 6140 |
Internet payments to the Wellington Rowing Club bank account (02-0500-0900662-00) can also be made. Please clearly state your name and what the payment is for on your transaction and attach confirmation of payment with your application form.
There have been some changes made to the site gallery.
It now requires a computer to have a flash player in order to view images. On the plus side, the new gallery allows images to be uploaded much faster, and will stream content to users much more efficiently.
Check it out here.
The Wellington Rowing Association Awards were held this week, and Wellington Rowing Club made a good showing.
Paul Moreno, gold medalist at the National Championships in the Men's Club 2x-, and silver medalist in the Men's Club 4x- picked up the WRA Rower of the Year award. Gus Smith, an Onslow College parent, won Volunteer of the year.
We had several club members nominated for various awards. Lauren McAndrew was nominated for Cox of the Year, Matthew Perry for Coach of the Year, and Joe Wright, another Onslow College representative, was nominated for the Most Promising Rower.
Andrew Carr-Smith (who runs the RowIT website) was nominated for Administrator of the Year because of the massive time his website has saved club captains in doing their regatta entries.
Well done everyone!
Check out the latest Masters newsletter here.
The promotional poster for the 2009 Corporate Challenge has also been uploaded.
During the Easter weekend the Victoria University Rowing Squad competed at the University Rowing Championships on Lake Ruataniwha.
After 14 hours of travelling south, and several “comfort stops” the squad arrived in a very cold Twizel.
Racing on the Saturday and Sunday saw some well fought races for all crews. Most crews did well and Vic came away with some fantastic results given the lack of water time some crews had.
A number of Wellington Senior rower's travelled to Levin to compete in the Great Forest Half Marathon in the weekend. The gun went, and the race leaders were off, but within the rowing contingent, all eyes were on the battle between Jack Ashby and Brad Lawson.
There had been plenty of smack talk leading up to this event, and the two did not disappoint. The pair had each other in sight for most of the race, but Jack was able to edge Brad for the win in a time of 1.26, with Brad on his heels in 1.27.
A few results:
| Mark Brocklehurst | 7th | 1.23 |
| Jack Ashby | 11th | 1.26 |
| Brad Lawson | 13th | 1.27 |
| Dave Campbell | 21st | 1.30 |
| Alex Wright | 83rd | 1.41 |
| Rob Wightman | 122nd | 1.47 |
| Kat Corsa | 141st | 1.49 |
| Elisee Vaiolti | 178th | 1.54 |
| Nikii Corsa | 187th | 1.55 |
Welcome to Wellington Rowing Club's refurnished website.
Appart from the general tidy up of the site's layout, and architecture, the new site has some cool new items added, such as boat allocation, squad training programmes (to be updated when the new season starts). You can check out the new photo browser as well (requires Javascript to be enabled for best results).
This site is compatiable with IE 6.0 or later, or the equivalent Firefox versions.
During the week starting on 16th of February, Wellington Rowing Club took part in the Banklink New Zealand National Championships.
The club had Senior and Club men's and women's crews competing. It also had a single Novice women's squad.
All the crew's had a great start in the regatta, most of them made A finals, and few qualified as top seeds.
Finals day didn't go as well for everybody, with a few disappointing results. But we had some excellent results in the Men's Club 2x- and 4x-. Paul Moreno and Emil Wendeler took gold in the 2x-, and then teamed up with Tufi Sele and James Mathers a few hours later in the 4x- to take a very close silver in the 4x-.
The Club Men had a very, very close race in their 8+ final, missing out on third by a heartbreaking 0.06 of a second.
The Novice women made finals in both the coxed four, and the eight, but unfortunately missed out on medals.
The club women had a good crack at a medal in the Senior 4-, but came up short.
Wellington Rowing Club will be heading to Lake Ruataniwha for the New Zealand Club Championships starting on the 16th of February. The club will be represented by women's Novice and Senior crew's, and a strong looking Senior men's squad.
After some promising results at KR2 it looks like the senior women will be hoping for a strong performance in the senior 4-, while the novice women will be attempting to better the bronze medal won in the 8+ by their predecessors last year. The senior men, led by coach Matthew Perry, will be in search of their first New Zealand title in a number of different boats.
It's been a long hard winter/summer of training, and everyone is looking forward to doing the club proud.
A contingent of 12 members of the Wellington Rowing Club competed in the B, C and D events at Legion of Masters regatta in Hamilton in April. Everyone had a great time with mixed results - Sara McFall and Frances Graham won medals in the Women's B Pair, the rest enjoyed their experience!
Six masters also went to Blenheim at Queens Birthday weekend and competed in the South Island Masters Champs. France Graham picked up another gold, this time filling in for the Blenheim Women's A quad.
Barry Sayer and Laurie Counsell also won gold by managing to get themselves picked for the winning Combined Eights crew. But all was not lost as all squad members won a medal in long distance race on the day before the main event.
