Nothing Like a Good Paddling

The knife-thin rowing shell cuts through Newport Beach’s Back Bay amid the morning mist--smooth, effortless, graceful. But it takes hard work to make a boat look that good.

Inside the narrow craft, 55-year-old Bill Burge labors like a human piston--legs exploding, body recoiling, the long oars at his side digging through the water. His seat slides backward and forward on its rails. With each stroke he concentrates on the technique that speeds him through the water.

“It’s not an easy sport. It takes a lot of energy,” said Burge, a science teacher at Monte Vista High School in Newport Beach. “It’s something that not a lot of people do, but the people who do it understand it.”

Most folks who want to cruise the water under their own power opt for kayaks or canoes. But for those looking for more speed, or a bigger challenge, or a better workout, the answer can be found in the single seat of a scull--the long, narrow boat in which the rower pulls both oars at once.

“It’s a great sport,” Burge said. “It’s low impact, it’s aerobic, it’s aesthetic and the sense of rhythm is nice. You also have to concentrate all the time.”

To many people, rowing conjures images of Harvard and Yale crews racing down the Charles or challenging their Oxford counterparts on the Thames in the Henley Regatta.

Most people who row started doing it in college--Orange Coast College, in fact, has a program that competes with the best university squads in the country.

But it’s tough to continue after graduation, and harder still to get into the sport if you never rowed in school.

Unless you get to the Newport Aquatic Center.

The center, on Newport’s Back Bay, offers rowing classes, boat rentals and storage, as well as the chance to rub elbows with the best oarsmen and oarswomen in the world. The member-supported center, which opened in 1988, has served as the training home for 28 Olympians in kayaking, rowing and canoeing.

“There aren’t a lot of rowing shops, like there are bicycle shops,” said Chip McKibben, former Olympic rower who is on the center’s board of directors. So the center is a unique resource. It gives beginners a chance to learn from the best--McKibben teaches an introductory class--and get the feel of actually rowing in the water, which is a bit trickier than tugging on a rowing machine in the gym.

“It’s like trying to ride your bike, and the street is moving 5 mph sideways,” McKibben joked.

Burge’s first experience rowing was as a kid in a fishing dory in Northern California. But 10 years ago a student in his oceanography class at Newport Harbor High suggested he try sculling.

Now every weekday morning at 6:30, he makes the drive from Tustin to row for two hours before work. He refuses to let his routine be interrupted--not by rain, cold weather, even whales.

Burge said he loves rowing in part because it gives him a chance while exercising to be on the water and observe the birds, plants and animals surrounding him. But he almost got too close a look at a whale that wandered into the bay once and sidled along his delicate shell.

“When you’re in a little tiny boat that weighs less than 26 pounds, and you have a 30-foot whale come up beside you--it’s a little unnerving,” Burge said.

They parted ways unscathed, though. The worst thing that’s happened to Burge is falling into the water after ramming a buoy. “You run into things when you’re going backwards,” he said.

But when it’s done right, rowing “is really beautiful,” said Billy Whitford, the Aquatic Center’s executive director.

“It sounds so simple,” he said. “You see a guy out on the water and you say, ‘Duck soup--it’s so simple.’

“But it’s different when you’re in the hot seat.”

Raise one hand too high during the stroke, or get arms and knees tangled, or lose rhythm some other way and what had been a human metronome can spin wildly out of control. And end up in the water.

“It’s fantastic to watch a really skilled oarsman. It’s kind of inspirational,” Burge said. “But it makes you feel like you’re all thumbs, so to speak, when you first start.”

Many runners say they enjoy their sport because their minds can wander as the miles fall away. But Burge said rowing’s appeal is exactly the opposite--the technique is so exacting it requires focus that blocks life’s distractions.

“You can’t think about anything else but getting those two oars coordinated,” Burge said. “It gets you up in the morning and sets your day right.”

“When I just need to ground myself,” McKibben added, “I get in a rowing shell. After an hour, my batteries are recharged.”

McKibben tries not to sound metaphysical when describing his sport. He has a hard time, though.

“It’s a chance to get back to nature. It’s a chance to be alone. If it’s a spiritual release you need, rowing is first and foremost,” he said, his passion percolating beneath his lanky frame.

“When you’re doing it right, you know it. You hear the bubbles under the boat. You hear the water trickling off the end of the oars. The slide of the seat comes forward. All you’re doing is giving the boat a little push. It’s a never-ending treadmill. It’s like a Wheel-O,” he said, referring to the toy--the magnetized wheel that rolls endlessly back and forth on its handle, as long as the operator maintains the correct rhythm.

“It’s controlled aggression. You need the power of a weight lifter and the endurance of a marathoner. It’s a psychological challenge,” McKibben said. “And it’s a lot of fun.

“I’ve seen guys who are 80 years old and are still out there. It’s their release,” he said. “What draws people into rowing is their own satisfaction.

“If we just get them hooked, their hearts will tell them what to do.”