Home Studio of Skip Izon

Skip Izon

Posted by Baillie on Apr 8, 2011 in Highway 21 Route, home studio, skip izon | 0 comments

My first kind of professional boat, and the most notable, is the Olympic rowing shells. This is old news that goes back to the early 80s. A gentleman by the name of Jackson Coughlan of Hudson Boat Works had taken lines, which is a visual description of a hull, off a German boat and Swiss boat, which at the time were the two fastest racing shells for doubles rowing in the world. I analyzed those lines. I worked back through the mathematics, and I could describe the performance of these two boats from the mathematics. The description I came up with was the same as what he had seen. Stability, initial stability, secondary stability, acceleration speed, tracking all these things; no turning in racing shells. What I saw in the mathematics agreed with what he saw in the water.

He came out with a set of criteria for a Canadian boat. I worked back through the mathematics and came up with a hull shape that fit that description and Jack built it. At first no one liked it; it was kind of tippy. People would try it, but it just hung in the boathouses because people would try it and people didn’t like it.

Eventually a crew was stuck for a boat and they had to use this Hudson that nobody liked and they went out and they won. It was finicky, but it was fast. Since then it’s brought back three Olympic medals over the years. I think it’s been tweaked and modified since. The basic boat is my design, but I can’t really call it my design now because it has been modified.

The Canadians use it and the Americans have a medal with it, too. I’m not sure what other countries use it. Silken Laumann and her sister Daniele used it, as did Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle.

Marnie and I worked at the Ceeps together before she started rowing. I was a waiter and she was a busgirl. She was a great girl; lots of fun to work with. She originally got into rowing as an exercise thing and just was taken with it and took it to the Olympics. She’s an amazing girl. She didn’t know that I designed her boat until years later when Discovery TV did a thing. It kind of came full circle. [Information Source: Casey Lessard - Grand Bend Strip]