THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR Soviet Union sent a crew from Vilnius, Lithuania to participate in the Independence Day Regatta in Philadelphia.4297 Joe invited them to row out of the Penn boathouse. Penn rigger Wayne Neal was working in his shop one day when he noticed that the Soviet coaches were watching everything he did. On a whim, he picked up a jar of honey left by one of the hungry Penn Lightweights and poured some on the oarlock that he was adjusting. On race day, he noticed that the Lithuanians shoved off with honey on their oarlocks.4298 Despite this, they won the race over IRA Champion Cornell, Western Champion Washington and Vesper Boat Club of Philadelphia.4299 In 1963, Joe invited Ratzeburger Ruderclub,4300 perhaps the most influential crew of the mid-20th Century, to the Penn Boathouse and even had them over to his house for dinner. The Light Boat Cadwalader: “Most coaches have despaired that it is virtually impossible to judge with the naked eye exactly how well individual athletes in an eight are performing during a single stroke, let alone for every stroke throughout a race, yet no one had found a practical way to monitor performance in a boat. “In the 1960s, no one on the West Coast, no one on the East Coast and no one abroad had been diligent or curious enough to solve the technological challenges of gathering this need-to-know information from a boat on the water. “Joe Burk tried, and he succeeded.”4301 4297 See Chapter 98. 4298 Neal, personal conversation, 1970 4299 NAAO Official Rowing Guide, 1963, p. 119 4300 See Chapter 92. 4301 Cadwalader, personal correspondence, 2005 In 1964, with the assistance of former Penn coxswain Dr. John McGinn, he created a system that became known as ‘the Light Boat.’ George Pocock: “There was a spring on each rowlock, and the further you compressed the spring, the more lights came alive. There was a bank of four lights for each man, and if he was pulling very lightly, one light came on. If he was pulling a bit heavier, two lights came on. If he was pulling his optimum, three lights came on, and if he was pulling his maximum, four lights.”4302 Each oarsman had his own light panel, and the coxswain had a master panel and could see the whole boat’s performance by the number of lights lit and by the duration that those lights stayed lit. Nash: “All the lights at twilight looked like a moving pin-ball machine.”4303 There were obvious benefits to knowing this information throughout the boat, rower by rower, stroke by stroke and race by race. Joe Burk had quantified what no one else had ever measured.4304 Purdy: “Some rowers loved the Light Boat. Others hated it. It gave you very clear instant feedback on what was an effective stroke and what wasn’t. Best memory: one of the chronic third boaters letting out a howl in the middle of a piece, amazed that he had finally, for one stroke, gotten all four lights to go off. “Another clear memory – rowing in the dark during the winter months, the only light coming from passing cars on East and West River Drives. The river was pitch black except that every stroke there was a flash of (up to) sixty-four lights illuminating our 4302 G. Pocock, KCTS-TV 4303 Nash, personal correspondence, 2007 4304 This section is based largely on Cadwalader correspondence, 2005 1181
