Sculler's release

[1xsculler]

So, we've beaten Cunningham's Sculler's Catch to death now how about the Sculler's, or Cunningham's, release.

Current rowing technique is to push the hands down at the end of the drive to take the blades out of the water square and then feather them.

Cunningham says something like if you have a light enough grip at he end of the stroke so the handles can rotate all you have to do to get a nice clean and effortless release is to quickly reverse the direction of the handle when it is still under pressure and the blade will pop out of the water and naturally fall onto the feather. This seems to work very well and I believe is the type of release Tufte uses in the DVD, "The Perfect Stroke". An easy way to test this release is to let one oar rest on the water and pull full strokes with the other. When you reverse the handle of the oar you are rowing with, the Cunningham release occurs very naturally and effortlessly.

[sul]

So, we've beaten Cunningham's Sculler's Catch to death now how about the Sculler's, or Cunningham's, release.

Current rowing technique is to push the hands down at the end of the drive to take the blades out of the water square and then feather them.

Cunningham says something like if you have a light enough grip at he end of the stroke so the handles can rotate all you have to do to get a nice clean and effortless release is to quickly reverse the direction of the handle when it is still under pressure and the blade will pop out of the water and naturally fall onto the feather. This seems to work very well and I believe is the type of release Tufte uses in the DVD, "The Perfect Stroke". An easy way to test this release is to let one oar rest on the water and pull full strokes with the other. When you reverse the handle of the oar you are rowing with, the Cunningham release occurs very naturally and effortlessly.

Finally will respond to this.

Again, in that video with Frank and Stan, Frank attempts to demonstrate this release, how he keeps the blade buried and simply changes direction with it. The blade consistently gets caught in the water.

Then Stan takes a shot at it, and he starts rowing. "That's it, that's it" you can hear Frank saying as the blade comes out cleanly. Then you see Stan's hand and it's clearly pushing down to release.

The only way the blade can come out in this fashion is if the blade is already out of the water. It's a washout, then you can either push away and let the blade feather itself, or feather a little more actively.

Think of this. When you are pulling at a good depth, part of the shaft is buried. The shaft has to come out of that water before the blade can even rest flat on the water. So you have a choice, you can draw your hands more gradually to release, allowing for a flat feather and no apparent downward push of the hands, OR you can do so more abruptly.

The advantage of a more abrupt release is that you stay locked into the water for a longer impulse of the stroke.

Every case I've ever seen of a flat release is a wash out stroke. The stroke can be clean, because the sculler lets up slightly in the draw as the blades come out.

The supposed "Cavity" behind the blade isn't there, there's water there, and if the blade is buried, it's flowing over the back of the blade as the shell moves away from the puddle. What feels like a cavity is the blade rising in the last foot of the drive exposing the back of the blade, and lifting the shaft out of the water.

A perfect finish, like a perfect catch, is impossible, and just like the catch, there is some discrete time where the blade is moving against the water while rising out of it. Good sculling makes that time as minimal, symmetric, and clean.

[caustic]

Sul, I have to disagree, but I bet you already saw that coming .

With a ferryman's finish, you don't need, and should not, gradually pull down into the release. You actually should be pulling *up* as the oar approaches your body, and Frank does go into detail about that in his books. the purpose is to maintain the depth of the blade as long as possible, with pressure - to preserve the cavity that will allow your blade to extract with minimal water contact. the oar's spring is what helps with the quick transition and extraction - the more bent the blade, the more energy that can be utilized for extraction. So, what looks slow on the paddle is faster when done with more pressure.


As for the cavity, it most definitely exists, I've seen it and I can recreate it, both with a sweep and with a sculling blade - and those were not strokes that my coach would have called me out on. The reason it doesn't stick around is because water is continually trying to fill it - only through pressure on the blade is the pocket created, and when the pressure decreases and disappears, the pocket lessens and disappears.

If the blade was washing out, it would be obvious - cavitated water and a lot of splashing. If you don't break the water when extracting, I would say that that is not a washed out blade. The very term originated because the "washing out" blade made the water look like the inside of a washing machine.



Dammit, this is going to make me spend money on a GoPro.

[1xsculler]

Get the waterproof Pentax Optio W90 and also the remote control for it. I believe it's a much better and more versatile camera than the GoPro. I have one and am not selling it. This link just happens to be one I found on Ebay so you could see what they look like. I think the remote is about $25 and is also available on Ebay, i.e. O-RC1, or something like that. Having a remote control is a must if you're taking your own video from your own boat. This makes it ease to click the video on and off so you get just what you need.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pentax-Optio-W9 ... SwT6pV40n6

[caustic]

ooooh. I think I might be making a purchase this week....


Related, Peter Mallory has a good description of the Ferryman's finish in his blog, from 2015. It pretty much sums up the entire purpose of the ferryman's finish. In short, it exists because of three things. 1)smoothness of extracting the blade to preserve boat speed, 2)using any remaining bend in the oar to help the rower get their body around the corner without 3)disturbing teh waterline by driving the bow down in the finish.

The things I think we can all agree on is that 1)a porpoising boat is going to ultimately be slower than one that is not, because of reduced wetted surface area and parasitic oscillatory effects, and 2)if the rower doesn't have to burn calories in motions that are not directly related to moving the boat, ultimately that rower will fatigue later in the race than one who is using more muscle to move their body up and down as opposed to forward or backward (i.e. orthogonal to boat travel as opposed to ocidentally).

The blog posting in question:
http://www.rowingevolution.com/node/149 - about 2/3s of the way down after responding to a letter from Jim Buckley about Schulschlag. He does make mention that both Ginn and Tomkins and also Redgrave and Pinsent used the ferryman's finish, so I think we can agree that it definitely has been used by modern crews, and to good success.

[sul]

Sul, I have to disagree, but I bet you already saw that coming .

With a ferryman's finish, you don't need, and should not, gradually pull down into the release. You actually should be pulling *up* as the oar approaches your body, and Frank does go into detail about that in his books. the purpose is to maintain the depth of the blade as long as possible, with pressure - to preserve the cavity that will allow your blade to extract with minimal water contact. the oar's spring is what helps with the quick transition and extraction - the more bent the blade, the more energy that can be utilized for extraction. So, what looks slow on the paddle is faster when done with more pressure.

let's make sure we define our terms. OP talked about Cunningham's description of a 'scullers release'. The ferryman's finish can be employed as well, but isn't the same. In the sculler's release, the claim is made that you simply push the hands away, the blade releases it's bent energy, and basically feathers itself.

I had two different descriptions of it, one by Duvall, one by Conn. Duvall says that you hold the handle at the finish briefly while the blade straightens, then push away. Conn described it differently where the handle and blade are, for a instant, moving in the same direction, that your handle is moving from your body while the shaft releases the remaining energy.
Duvall's description makes more sense to me than Conn's. I've been thinking how this is possible, the oar has to be driving the oarlock to keep the blade locked in the water, while the handle would be moving away from the oarlock. The oar doesn't just bend between oarlock and blade, the whole oar bends.

With the thin toothpick blades, the blade only has to rise a little to get the shaft clear for a clean feather, so Duvall's release seems rational to me.

The Ferryman's, is simply moving the body toward the stern before the release is started.

I just checked the video of Pinsent/Redgrave in '96, they are not employing the ferryman's finish IMHO.

BUT, one can employ this finish AND release as I've described. If you keep the blade buried, you don't need to though.

As for the cavity, it most definitely exists, I've seen it and I can recreate it, both with a sweep and with a sculling blade - and those were not strokes that my coach would have called me out on. The reason it doesn't stick around is because water is continually trying to fill it - only through pressure on the blade is the pocket created, and when the pressure decreases and disappears, the pocket lessens and disappears.

The pocket is an illusion caused by a washed blade. It feels like there's a pocket there, but the blade has risen up so half of the blade is above the surface of the water but there is still water covering the face of the blade with a little mound. Look carefully at rowing from the bow, you can see the blade mostly out of the water. As scullers we learn to control the pressure so it doesn't feel washy.

Here's a thought experiment. You claim that there is a hole behind the blade at heavy pressure, what about a light paddle? Do you have to release differently at a paddle than at full pressure? There is a lot of disturbance, for sure, and at the front end and back ends of the stroke, and more pressure on the face than the back.

How does this cavity relate to the actual movement of the blade TOWARD the finish line as the blade is finishing? There's turbulent flow, not a hole.

If the blade was washing out, it would be obvious - cavitated water and a lot of splashing. If you don't break the water when extracting, I would say that that is not a washed out blade. The very term originated because the "washing out" blade made the water look like the inside of a washing machine. (snip)

Every stroke is a washout by every rower, just like every catch is basically 'rowed in', but a good finish that effectively uses the last portion of the body swing and arm pull to propel the boat is a matter of inches of handle travel to bow, rather than a foot or more. I should point out that an excellent rower rowing at a 24 will wash out less than (s)he does at a 40, as the time taken for the release will be the same.

[KitD]

As for the cavity, it most definitely exists, I've seen it and I can recreate it, both with a sweep and with a sculling blade

The cavity that occurs midstroke separates off from the tip of the blade just after, so by the finish, the blade is fully immersed again.

Jim Dwyer (who posts here?) shows this in some really useful overhead GoPro footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C44XxF1_ZA

(BTW, this perspective is very rarely seen in rowing but is probably more instructive than any other IMO).

Bill Atkinson also discusses it here:
http://www.atkinsopht.com/row/bladpath.htm

He also links to a page by Ken Young with pictures:
http://neutrino.phys.washington.edu/~wi ... .lift.html

[caustic]

Hmm. As taught to me by Frank, the "sculler's release" and the "ferryman's finish" were one and the same thing. From the blade side, the blade is being feathered at the same time as it is being extracted, as opposed to the vertical extraction and then subsequent feathering as two discrete motions. From the body and oar side, the body is pulled out of bow by the end in the oar, reducing bow dive in the finish when the suspended weight of the rower is forward of their hips, as opposed to behind the hips.

One thing that he used to tell me that was more advanced was to allow the blade to feather while still pulling, which can only be done through a very relaxed hold right at the moment of the finish, just prior to extraction. I don't think I was ever able to do it, but what he described to me was this:

As the blade comes into the end of the stroke, the force on the face reduces very quickly simply because of the angle of the blade and also because of the mechanical disadvantage of the arms not being able to exert as much force on the handle as the legs are able to earlier in the stroke. Since the oar is held with the fingers curling over the top of the handle, there is a small torque imparted upon the handle that is, for the bulk of the stroke ,easily overcome by the water acting on the blade to keep it square. However, at the tail end of the stroke, that force keeping the blade square to the water reduces very quickly, and that can allow the blade to turn slightly so that the bottom edge is more towards the stern than the top edge. The effect of this is that it helps to "anchor" the blade a little bit because the blade will want to dive down (like when a blade digs deep because it wasn't fully squared with the rower started pulling), and also helps reduce its profile against the oncoming water, so that that water helps "push" the blade out as you push the handles away, and also push it up.

Regarding the pocket, I have recreated it with a blade that was not riding out of the water as you describe. We have at our boathouse dockboxes, that allow a rower to remain firmly anchored to the dock and pull a full sized oar ( have do doubt that there are likely a lot of boathouses with these contraptions in the rafters, and people probably wonder what they were for). Due to the load, the oars have holes drilled through them to let water pass through and reduce the effort required. We used them as a tool to teach novices how to pull with a linear oar on a nice stable platform. It's an exaggeration of the load in the boat, but the pocket is massive and deep, and you can easily observe water pouring into the pocket around the top and sides of the oar blade, and the pocket is easily almost as deep as the entire width of the blade at some points, but still there as long as there is some force on the blade.

With the dockboxes, you can even deliberately dig very deep and STILL create a depression behind the blade.

[bd_sculler]

From around 7:30 to about 9:00 in this abbreviated version of the Effective Sculling video there is a discussion of the release and slow motion video where you can see the opening in the water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdLRZgPJGhs

[Steven M-M]

Bd_Sculler -- My lying eyes see something different: I see the 'pocket' spinning off the tip of the blade, but the shaft end of the blade covered on both faces. If anything the very tip may be still in the 'pocket'. With both faces of the blade covered at the shaft end, lift returns and as long as pressure is applied you can effectively move the boat right to the extraction.

[sul]

From around 7:30 to about 9:00 in this abbreviated version of the Effective Sculling video there is a discussion of the release and slow motion video where you can see the opening in the water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdLRZgPJGhs

THis demonstrates exactly what I pointed out. If you look at 7:39 and stop the stroke at or before mid stroke, you see the blade completely buried and about 5 inches of the shaft. quick click just past the mid-drive and you see the blade re-appear and the whole shaft above the water surface well before the release.

It's not that there's a pocket there, there's just no water above the surface.

[Steven M-M]

more good overhead shots in this drone vid: https://youtu.be/0XfL_2EzEHI

[bd_sculler]

If you freeze the video (from the Effective Sculling video) at 8:29 it looks like there is an opening in the water, but I could be wrong. I agree it seems the opening was caused by water flowing over the top and the end of the blade. The commentator refers to the hollow behind the blade. I was wondering if anybody was going to comment on Olaf Tufte's technique and in particular his release.

[sul]

If you freeze the video (from the Effective Sculling video) at 8:29 it looks like there is an opening in the water, but I could be wrong. I agree it seems the opening was caused by water flowing over the top and the end of the blade. The commentator refers to the hollow behind the blade. I was wondering if anybody was going to comment on Olaf Tufte's technique and in particular his release.

I think he has a couple examples of some very good releases, and some that wash out. The good ones are early. I really like his hands, you see his wrist and hand drop to release. The blade rises in the water and begins it's feather but his clear from the water before it feathers flat. That angle is hard to see though, I'd prefer side view, you can see the vertical movements of the blade better.

He has 2 or 3 after 8:00 that come out of the water before initiating release.

when you press the scull handle down to release and begin the feather, the hands need not complete the feather movement, they should release the grip and allow the blades to complete to flat position by the momentum already begun. No, the water is not doing feathering, the blade is out. For good relaxed sculling, the hands should only grip the handles briefly twice, to initiate the feather square and initiate the feather flat, otherwise it is hooking the handle on drive, or just maintaining light contact on recovery.

I asked the same question twice in two previous responses, give that any thought??

[bd_sculler]

The pocket is an illusion caused by a washed blade. It feels like there's a pocket there, but the blade has risen up so half of the blade is above the surface of the water but there is still water covering the face of the blade with a little mound. Look carefully at rowing from the bow, you can see the blade mostly out of the water. As scullers we learn to control the pressure so it doesn't feel washy.

Here's a thought experiment. You claim that there is a hole behind the blade at heavy pressure, what about a light paddle? Do you have to release differently at a paddle than at full pressure? There is a lot of disturbance, for sure, and at the front end and back ends of the stroke, and more pressure on the face than the back.

How does this cavity relate to the actual movement of the blade TOWARD the finish line as the blade is finishing? There's turbulent flow, not a hole.

I confess I don't know the answers but from what I could tell the puddles come mostly from the middle of the stroke and I get the impression that the release is much easier to do at full pressure, as I start the feathering and relax the grip and the blade seems to pop out squared and feathered; it feels like the water does all the work for me. This seems to be consistent with sul's and others' advice but I realize I am on shaky ground. I know from the videos I have taken that I am not always doing what I think I am doing. This morning (frosty here in Michigan) I did watch the puddles and if I go a little deeper with the blades, maybe doing a little "over the barrel" there is less disturbance of the water near the surface. I have read that Kleshnev and others say the blades should be deeper than most people think, so maybe a little "over the barrel" is not such a bad thing.