On the kind of December morning when the sun seems to barely lift its head and peek at the Island before dipping back down again, a group of women wearing matching blue jackets gathered on the beach near Owen Park in Vineyard Haven. They were part of the rowing club, a hardy, all-year, almost all-weather band of intrepid seafarers. 

This group had woken in the darkness of pre-dawn to gather at the beach for their weekly, hour-long expedition. For the rowers, there is no pre-determined route, just a jaunt out, then a turn and a retreat to shore. The coxswain, or steersman, simply determines where to go based on his or her whims, the conditions, and whether there are any interesting features in the harbor to take a look at, such as eye-catching boats. 

The club consists of twenty-five year-round rowers and eight seasonal members. Four of the thirty-three are men and most are eligible for senior discounts, with a few in their late twenties and thirties. Their ranks are broken into seven-person crews that go out every day of the week –  in the afternoon or in the early morning, as was the case for this crew that was preparing to depart shortly after 7 a.m.

Once that morning’s group had pulled their long oars from a small shack on the beach, they waded through several inches of icy water to get to their vessel, a thirty-two-foot pilot gig boat named Cassie, painted red with a strip of pale blue at the bottom. The women got into place with three rowers on each side and the coxswain in the stern. As the sky began to flush orange at the horizon, they pushed off and began to row.

***

The genesis of the rowing club can be traced back to another organization called Vineyard Voyagers, which was run by the late Sidney Morris and Malcolm Boyd, an Island carpenter. Vineyard Voyagers spearheaded the construction of the club’s two gig boats, Cassie and Grace. Under the direction of Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin, of Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway in Vineyard Haven, and boatbuilder Myles Thurlow, about fifty people helped to build the boats. Grace was finished in 2005 and Cassie in 2006.

As soon as the boats were built, they acted as beacons to Islanders. Jude Villa, the owner of Working Earth landscaping, is the rowing club’s chair. She first laid eyes on the newly finished Grace at the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair. Wendy Gray, a rower, was there with the boat to recruit members for the club.

“I saw that and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I definitely want to do that,’” Villa said.

She joined and has since become a fixture in the coxswain’s seat. After two years as a rower, every club member is expected to occasionally “cox.” This person is the leader of the boat for that expedition, the only person facing forward while the rowers face backward. 

Cassie and Grace are both pilot gig boats, a style of six-oar rowboat that was historically used to bring a local pilot out to a large vessel so that he or she could help the vessel’s captain navigate safely into a new harbor. Just like the pilots that the boats were designed for, it’s the coxswain’s job to understand the waters they’re in and to know where pitfalls could be. Due to the threat of nor’easters, the rowing club leaves from the more protected Owen Park Beach in the winter and from the more open beach by the Black Dog Tavern in the summer. In high season, just as the streets, shops, and beaches on land get crowded, so does the water. 

“We’ve all had a situation where people are just so clueless that they’ll put their anchor so close to where our ropes are and throw their anchor over our buoy,” Villa said. She and other coxswains untangle ropes, navigate aquatic traffic jams, and make sure the row can continue.

***

On this morning, however, the harbor was quiet. The air was fresh but not frigid. Terre Young, who was acting as cox, explained the club’s plans for when the weather does become too intense. “We have a fifteen-twenty rule,” said Young. “If the wind is fifteen miles per hour or stronger, we don’t go. If the temperature is twenty degrees or lower, we don’t go. It used to be twenty-twenty, but now we’re all older, I guess.” 

Still, a below-freezing day calls for warm clothing. “I have a pair of leggings and, in the coldest of cold air, I wear nice, thick wool,” she said. There are also “really thick socks,” Bog boots that go up to mid-calf or higher, a thick pair of corduroy or wool pants, “a couple of layers of shirts,” a sweater, a scarf, a hat and, importantly, mittens not gloves. “Mittens are great because you can wiggle your fingers more together, and they keep each other warm.” As the saying goes, there is no bad weather, just bad clothes.

The row continued and a few people chatted about the end of the year, the holidays, their children, and their travel plans. After a while, Young encouraged people to focus, saying it’s easier to get in sync with less talking. 

Villa agreed. “When I’m coxing, there’s times when I’ll say, ‘Okay, everyone, let’s have quiet time,’ or I’ll have them close their eyes,” she said. “You’re using your hearing and your other senses. When you concentrate more, I think it gives you just a more wholesome spiritual and meditative experience.”

Regardless of the level of chatter, sometimes a little more power is needed – to clear the path of an approaching motorboat, for example. “Whenever I cox, and I need everybody’s attention, I always use the phrase, ‘Okay, heads in the boat,” Villa said. “You put more strength into your stroke.”

Staying present also allows rowers to catch glimpses of visitors. Once in a while, a seal will poke its head out of the water, open its nostrils for a breath, and then dip back down.

The youngest member of the club appreciates the camaraderie of the group. Twenty-eight-year-old Lucy Grinnan moved to the Island in 2022 and now works as the program manager for the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society. Grinnan got started with the club in the winter of 2024 after hearing about it at a potluck at the Agricultural Hall. Grinnan, who uses they/them pronouns, said that they’ve been dealing with some difficult family dynamics lately and hearing from the group of older, wiser women has been a salve.

“There are people in the club who have gone through cancer, or they’ve gotten divorced or something and they’ve really been tracking each other’s lives for ten or more years,” they said. “There’s something really grounding about knowing that all of that life is happening and then people are fine.”

Grinnan rows twice a week at 7 a.m., has breakfast with the crew after, and still gets to their job on time. They’re disciplined in another way, too. They made a resolution to get in the water at least once during every month of the year. When enough time passes between dips, they “start to feel a little bit unmoored.” As is true with the consistency of the club, Grinnan appreciates that every time you go looking for the ocean, it’s there. 

Seeing the change of the seasons from out on the ocean is another one of Grinnan’s favorite parts of membership. “We get to see the harbor fill up; we get to see the harbor empty,” they said. The cycle continues.

***

During this particular outing, once the group had rowed for about half an hour, Young paused at the midpoint so the crew could admire the sunrise. She offered up well-wishes for the year ahead and encouraged others to do the same. 

Beyond handling navigation and untangling ropes, a cox is in charge of the safety of the crew and, in some ways, the mood of that trip. In the summer, one weekly crew jumps out of their boat for a quick dip before clambering back in and rowing home. Other crews wouldn’t consider such a thing, since the point for them is to seek a quiet, meditative experience. But regardless of the spirit of the group, the appeal of being out on the water seems as simple and deep as a Zen koan. It’s hard to describe to the uninitiated, said Malcolm Boyd, a rower who also helped run Vineyard Voyagers. 

“Being on the water is a whole other world that people who don’t get on the water – land people – can’t imagine and see,” Boyd said. “It’s like going out into space. It’s a different relationship with the compass. There are no street signs, nobody beeping their horn at you, no leaf blowers.”

Young stressed her gratitude for the experience and for the support of Sail MV, which took over the club from Vineyard Voyagers in 2006. Members pay dues of $250 per year and Sail MV takes care of the boats and provides restorations. “We are only able to do what we’re doing because of them,” Young said. 

Andrew Nutton, the executive director of Sail MV, said that the organization’s mission was about giving people the opportunity to be on the water. “We’re happy to support it and will continue to as long as we can,” he said. “To have a group who can go on the water and experience sunrise and sunset from the seat of a gig is pretty cool.”

As fun as it may be, joining the club comes with responsibility and isn’t something one can simply drop into and out of, Young said. While the winter rows may afford the members many things – including bragging rights – one of the main reasons they go out in the cold is for the sake of consistency. 

“Yeah, we’re gonna go year-round. Because if I don’t go, and somebody else doesn’t go, and then these guys are not able to...no, no, it’s a commitment,” she said. “It’s the love of rowing, the love of the companionship, the commitment to your team.” As the sky continued to brighten, Young directed the rowers to turn around and guided them back toward shore. The mood, which had been convivial, became contemplative. 

So, maybe the draw of the row is the conversation or maybe it’s the lack of leaf blowers. Maybe the consistency through the winter allows them to keep going in the summer, or maybe they get through the summer to make it to the winter. For all the hypothesizing that can be done from shore, the allure is best understood from inside the boat.

On the way back to shore, the rowers seemed to lock into a rhythm, their oars clanking against the pegs in time, like the sound of a horse galloping in slow motion. At the same moment, the boat grew silent. Perhaps this was because they’d found the rhythm, or maybe they found the rhythm because they’d grown quiet. Either way, they leaned forward together and leaned back together and they moved as one.