Page 24 of Open Water
"First thing. I don't care about your history." He looked at me and Braden. "In this boat, you're seat numbers. That's it. Talk to me, not each other. Clear?"
"Clear," I said.
Braden grunted.
"Moore. Set us off."
Liam took the first stroke. Clean. Legs, back, arms — the chain of movement that started in his quads and finished in his fingertips. The boat moved.
Tyler followed from three. His stroke was bigger than Liam's but he had an instinct for rhythm you couldn't teach. He locked into Liam's cadence within three strokes.
Braden from two. I felt his power before I heard his blade then the hull surging as his drive connected. He and Tyler together were raw force. The engine room doing its job.
And then me. Bow seat. The end of the chain. My job wasn't power, it was precision. Matching the timing that Liam set, that Tyler and Braden amplified, and translating it into balance. A bad bow seat makes a quad feel like rowing on a seesaw. A good one makes it feel like the hull is on rails.
I'd done this with Liam for months in the double. Feel him through the hull. Anticipate. Amplify. Don't fight, don't lead, just be there.
I was there.
"Settle," Remy called. "Twenty-six. Long and loose."
We settled. The rate dropped. The boat lengthened.
"Better. Catches together — three, your blade is a fraction late. Fix it."
Tyler adjusted. The next stroke was clean.
"Good. Run it out. Feel the glide."
I felt it. That moment after the finish where the blades lift and the boat runs on its own — carried by momentum and balance and the collective faith that nobody is going to rush the slide. In a double with Liam, that moment belonged to us. In a quad, it belonged to five people. And all five of us were letting it happen.
"Okay," Remy said, not with excitement — Remy didn't do excitement — but with clarity. "Building twenty. On my call."
He counted us in.
The first ten strokes were clean. Pressure building evenly, the rate climbing from twenty-six to twenty-eight to thirty. Tyler and Braden in the middle were a wall of power — I could feel it through the hull, the boat accelerating with each drive.
Liam was at the other end. Stroke seat. The rhythm. Three seats away and I could still feel him the way I always felt him. Through the water, through the shell, through whatever invisible thing connected us when we rowed.
"Fifteen. We're moving. Stay connected."
The boat lifted slightly. Not flying like me and Liam. But enough. The hull rose in the water as our combined pressure hit the right frequency. The drag dropped. The speed increased without the effort increasing. Physics. A quad that works: four people pulling becomes more than the sum of its parts.
"Twenty. Hold it."
We held it. Thirty-two strokes per minute. The oars entering and leaving the water in unison — that sound, like four doors closing at the exact same time.
We rowed a thousand meters at rate thirty-two and nobody said a word except Remy, and even Remy was quieter than usual.
When we came in, Hale was on the dock. Arms crossed. Eldridge behind him with the expression of a man who'd just watched his best rower blend into a Riverside boat and liked it more than he wanted to.
"That's the lineup," Hale said.
"That's the lineup," Eldridge agreed.
Remy climbed out of the cox seat. Walked past me on the dock. Tapped me once on the shoulder.
"Not bad, bow."
