I’m a pretty law-abiding person by nature, and throughout the pandemic I’ve gone along with the restrictions with as much patience and good humour as I can muster. Sure, it’s been frustrating at times, especially living on the border where we have to grapple with dual and often conflicting restrictions (not to mention being kept away from my own club because I live on the wrong side of the border).
On the whole, though, I’ve been happy to comply. I’d rather we got rid of the virus once and for all so we can get back to doing what we love, and so I’ve been happy to accept a level of confinement that was unthinkable just a year or so ago.
But there comes a point where the restrictions are doing more harm than good, and I’d venture to suggest that the Covid protocol for coxes is a case in point.
In a stern loader, coxes are required to wear both a face covering (such as a mask) AND eye protection – either sunglasses or a visor – the rationale is that as they face the crew there’s an increased risk of transmission between cox and stroke.
I didn’t realise that sunglasses would be OK on their own, so wore both sunnies and a visor, but even allowing for that, when you add in a hat and a coxbox headset, that’s still a LOT of equipment strapped to your head.
It wasn’t long before I was getting steamed up and struggling to see. Both sunglasses and visor had a habit of steaming up because of the mask, and the sun glinted furiously off the visor. If that weren’t enough to contend with, the various accoutrements had a habit of moving and shifting. The visor kept working its way up my head (I’ve heard reports of them working their way off altogether and ending up in the river) and my mask kept slipping, too. I had to regularly adjust them – not great when you’re meant to be focusing on holding a sensible line, avoiding the juniors in singles and keeping the crew together.
I’m reliably informed that you do get used to this set-up, but the fact remains that it’s both a distraction and an obstacle to seeing clearly.
Had it been a rainy day, I’d have ditched the sunnies and worn a visor, but I’ve heard stories of coxes struggling to see through rain-spattered visors, so that presents problems all of its own.
I appreciate that keeping everyone safe from Coronavirus is important, but honestly, I’m convinced the risk to me and my crew of an incident because my vision was impaired by glare and steam (or by rain), or because I was fiddling with the bits slipping up and down, was significantly higher than any risk from Covid.
If anyone from the Covid committees in British Rowing or any of the regional governing bodies is reading, can I urge you to revisit this next time you’re looking at the rules? Coxes are responsible for the safety of the crew, and if we’re trussed up and unable to see, that job is compromised.
Let me know what you think about this, and do shout if you have any top tips for managing the covid coxing conundrum.
I spent all of the last 20 years wearing prescription glasses whenever I was coxing (in fact whenever I was awake) and never had a problem with them getting raindrop-covered because I always wore a wide-peaked baseball cap whilst coxing; partly to keep sun and rain off my face/glasses but also mainly to secure my microphone (under the hat, without the headband). I do now struggle with the combination of obligatory face-mask and eye-covering – there’s no perfect remedy to stop the glasses occasionally steaming up – but it definitely helps if you wear your mask OVER your microphone (which is perfectly sanitary if it is your own mike, and you aren’t sharing it with anyone else. If you are sharing it, you simply have to wipe it down with a sanitary wipe before someone else uses it). You can minimize the steaming-up of the sunnies by having them well-ventilated (ie as far away from your face as possible) and by trying to get the top of the mask as close to your skin as possible. Alternatively, I suppose (in theory) that an airtight scuba diving mask would not steam up from the warm, moist air exhaled from your mouth – but you’d look a bit of a plonker wearing it!
By the way, another advantage of having your cox-box mike INSIDE your face-mask is that your calls, comments and commands to your crew are much easier for them to hear and to understand than if you have the mike OUTSIDE of the mask!
Hadn’t thought to do that. I wore a buff rather than a mask and everyone said they could hear me even with the mic outside (though to be fair, nobody has EVER complained they can’t hear me, with or without a mic!!!) I’ve heard some very muffled coxing through a mask, but had assumed that putting the mic inside would result in a lot of noise from the mask rubbing against the mic…