From beach to boat house, Bahamas take to rowing

The Bahamas, an island nation in the Atlantic Ocean, is still a fledgling rowing nation. The country became a member federation of the World Rowing Federation, FISA,  in 2011. A year later the Nassau Rowing Club was established in the nation’s capital city.

There are now two rowing clubs. The Nassau Rowing Club which uses Lake Cunningham in Nassau as their main rowing venue and Englerston Rowing in the Englerston subdivision. Lake Cunningham boasts 3500 metres of water that is flat every morning and often through the day. The Bahamas is made up of over 700 islands and there is rowing on other islands including Andros and Eleuthera, where individuals make the most of the calm bays.

Kyle Chea is the founding member and president of Nassau Rowing Club. Chea came to this year’s World Rowing Junior Championships with his two charges in the junior men’s double – Lex Fountain and William Stanhope. Fountain has been rowing for two years and has already attended FISA development camps and regattas in El Salvador, Uruguay and Mexico.  Fountain was aiming to row the single sculls at the junior championships but then met  Stanhope. “William just popped up out of nowhere and I was really lucky,” says Fountain.

Stanhope started rowing at boarding school in the United States and then joined Nassau Rowing Club on his return to the Bahamas. “Kyle said to us, ‘let’s try to go to Rio because you guys are getting pretty good.’ We’ve now been rowing together two and a half months.”

As there is yet to be an established regatta in the Bahamas, Chea makes plans for the top crews to travel to events in other countries. Last year they took a boat to the Head of the Charles in Boston, USA and thus became the first time a Bahamas boat had competed in the regatta. Chea plans to take three boats to Boston this year. “That will be our race in the autumn,” he says, with plans already in the making for spring and summer racing.

Fountain has his sights set on the 2017 World Rowing Championships which will be held in the relative proximity of Sarasota, Florida, USA. “It would definitely be nice to be there, that is something to work towards and we want to have a better performance.”

Chea is also eyeing up the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Some of the Nassau club members currently row at universities in other countries. “They are training very hard for their university teams and we hope to take advantage of their training,” says Chea. To get to Rio they would aim to qualify at the Latin American Continental Qualification Regatta in Chile in March 2016.

The enthusiasm of Chea is conspicuous and he willingly espouses the virtues of rowing in his country. “I think the climate is very unique,” says Chea.  “Our lake is really protected and the beach is only ¾ km away. So you go to training and you go to the beach after, and that is pretty special.”

But does that mean it’s difficult to get people off the beach and attract them to rowing? No, says Chea. ” The beach is motivation because you have to look good to go to the beach, so you work hard so you can go to the beach and look good (laughs).”