The Snowflake Regatta Catastrophe

I was at coxswain in high school, and at the handful of high school level competitions we went to I've never seen anything that bad. Although to be fair, I don't think any of the ones we went to were on a river that narrow, and some boats did veer a lot, but even the races close to the shore avoided the ground. For the the boat with a cox, the coxswain is fully responsible for what happens to the boat. The only mild issues I had was finding out the hard way where we could go outside of the channel markers to avoid normal boat traffic on the river we used to practice on, but a soft sandbar is easy to get out of. Also, the sculls, where each rower has two oars, there is usually no coxswain and the foremost rower is in charge and needs to keep looking over their back or use a mirror to see where they are going, and that can be considerably more difficult without some experience.

UofM Crew. To say I was third string is to be polite.

1. Starters cannot see the finish line. Boats are dispatched on a schedule, sometimes before the previous race is finished.
2. Inexperienced coxswain. The rowers sit backwards. The cox steers the boat and gives commands.