Not only do Kavia Moulded Products design, tool and manufacture products for rowing and sculling, our product manager Iain Hill is still an active rower and was competing in this years Masters Championships hosted at the Nottingham Watersports Centre on Sunday 19th May. He won a Silver Medal in the MDIM34+ event just losing gold by a canvas (approx. 2m).
The event and masters racing is very popular with this year’s event turning away some entries. The day is a full schedule with 165 races and over 700 crews racing.
Masters rowing (formally known as Veteran Rowing before 2010) begins at age 27 to over 85.
Masters rowing categories are offered at domestic, national and international events and summer sprint racing is side-by-side over a 1000 meters. National and international events are usually held on lakes with 6-lane racing.
Preparation for Iain’s racing typically involves about 8 hours of training per week: 2-3x water sessions, 2x rowing machine sessions (ergometer or water-rower), 1x weights, 2x running and some cycling to and from the boathouse.
Iain has over 13 years competitive rowing experience and it is this combined with his product design skills that allows him to think up new product ideas for rowing and sculling sector that can be injection moulded products for Kavia. Iain and his crew used the BLMB Kit for winter training as the brackets are designed to mount bicycle lights to rowing boats for evening or early morning outings. The winter is when all of the summer racing preparation is done and the brackets allow rowers to get out on the water safely for more sessions.
The new 2K bow ball is about to go into production and is also a safety related product, all rowing craft are required to have a bow ball to protect the sharp bows to third party collisions. The current product design has a couple of major issues the Kavia 2K bow ball addresses: UV light degradation is a problem in all rubbers and polymers so with exposure to sunlight the polymer degrades and becomes weaker and usually tears. The Kavia product is made from two materials, the coloured core is denser and where highest impact and repetitive loads are is protected from direct sunlight with a second skin making it safer and more durable.
The second issue is the mounting fixing hole is weak around this area due to the soft material and also UV degrading. The Kavia 2K Bow ball uses a denser and stiffer material improving this performance significantly.
Kavia has a UK distributor for both these products and is looking for international distributors and boat builders. Please use our contact page to make your enquiry (select distributor enquiry in pull down).
