Whakatipu Rowing Club’s planning on complementing its success on the water with modern clubroom facilities.
It’s fundraising to extend its single-level boat storage shed by the shores of its training venue, Lake Hayes.
It’s got resource consent for a ground-floor extension to create a storage and changing area and a gym that’ll accommodate up to 11 or 12 rowing machines — and a first floor comprising a main clubroom area with kitchen, toilet and shower facilities and a viewing balcony overlooking the lake.
Currently, the club’s gym area’s used for storing the coaches’ boats and equipment.
The additions have been designed by club masters rower Emma Schmitz, from Arrowtown’s Assembly Architects, to cater for a growing club that turned heads earlier this year by finishing second equal on the medal table at the national secondary schools’ Maadi Cup regatta.
At a recent corporate sponsorship event, club patron and former mayor Jim Boult said the redevelopment ‘‘will provide the club with one of the best facilities in the country’’.
It’s already building four side-by-side boat sheds close to the nearby public toilets.
These will provide vital boat storage, and easier access to the water.
Club president Amy Wilson-White says construction timeframes for the clubhouse depend on securing funding, but notes Rowing New Zealand’s been highly supportive.
At the sponsorship event, its outgoing CEO Geoff Barry presented a limited-edition painting of the gold medal-winning NZ men’s eight from last year’s Tokyo Olympics, to be auctioned at a gala dinner next year.
Superb regatta
Whakatipu Rowing Club blew many other clubs out of the water at last weekend’s Otago champs regatta at Twizel’s Lake Ruataniwha.
Marley King-Smith, 16, the boys’ under-17 single sculls winner at this year’s Maadi Cup, won the open men’s single sculls, rare for an U17 rower, while the club also took out the U17 and U18 men’s coxed quad, the men’s U17 and U18 double scull, men’s novice double scull and coxed quad, and the women’s U18 double sculls and coxed quad.
