Rowers: is it fair for a sculling quad to race against a coxed eight?

Question

Today, my novice girls team (most of us have only been rowing for one season) had a scrimmage against a few other novice boats, including a sculling quad. The sculling quad had a short headstart, though we still beat them. Did we beat them because of our "power" or because it's simply unfair for a sculling quad to be racing against an eight?

Answer 1

A quad is not quite as fast as an eight, but it's easy to make it fair- our coach just staggers the start a bit.  THe eight is longer so has a little less drag, and even with the cox has probably a bit less weight to pull per rower- say 220 lb for the boat and 120 for the cox divided by eight rowers is 42.5 pounds of dead weight to accelerate, whereas in the quad the boat is about 180 lb, so abour 45 pounds each.  Plus- a subtlety- bow in the quad loses effectiveness because she has to turn her head to steer every 10 or 20 strokes.  They say 'keep your head in the boat' for a reason.

In our club, the scullers are the better rowers and we can usually beat the women's eights and all but the first men's boat.

Answer 2

As a general rule, the more rowers the faster the boat.  An eight man boat is about 10-15 seconds faster than a quad scull (with or without a cox) in a 2,000 meter race.  If you look at racing results on a given regatta, you will usually see that this 10-15 second rule is true.  

Here are some links with 2,000 meter racing times in them so you can compare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowing_Worl...

http://www.rowing.biddulph.btinternet.co...

As a general rule, a coxless is faster than a coxed, a scull is faster than a sweep, and the eight man is the fastest boat of them all.  

If you want a real race, pit your bow four against your stern four.  As a cox, you will never see your teammates pull so hard in their lives (using two separate 4 man sweeps, of course.)  Now that's a good time.