Rowing is a full-body workout, a full-team sport and fun enough to want to go full speed ahead
Team members of the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club gather before sunrise to launch their boats in Newport Harbor. Rowing, which includes sweep boats that use single-sided oars and sculls with double oars, has solo and two-man boats but is overwhelmingly a team sport.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)The eight-person rowing crew with the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club carries a boat to the water for a pre-dawn practice run in Newport Harbor.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)Newport Sea Base Rowing Club Masters Coach Victoria Draper shouts commands through an old-fashioned megaphone to her rowing crew.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)The four-person competiive rowing team with the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club glides across the calm water of Newport Harbor before dawn.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)They come from all walks of life and many professions, but when the men and women of the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club climb into their eight-person boat and start to pull on the oars, they are one.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)Members of the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club aboard two racing boats paddle into Newport Harbor for a practice session. Their practices begin before sunrise when they haul their carbon fiber boats to a dock and finish just before work begins.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)Rowing in a 55-foot-long carbon-fiber racing shell, one of those long, thin $30,000-or-more boats one would see in college crew competitions and the Olympics, is a world away from the 10-second learning curve for a kayak.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)Newport Sea Base Rowing Club Masters Coach Victoria Draper shouts commands through an old-fashioned megaphone to her rowers.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)Lighted by the hues of the sunrise, the four-person competitive rowing crew is into the home stretch of a workout. Currently, 28 of the 37 members of Sea Base, founded a year ago, are women.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)The men and women of the Newport Sea Base Rowing Club carry their eight-person boat along the dock in Newport Harbor after a sunrise practice session.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)