The FISA World Tour is held every year and the target participants are recreational rowers. Recreational rowers combine rowing, tourism, sight-seeing and friendship. Crews do not compete against one another, instead rowers participate in tours around the world in an effort to introduce recreational rowing to nations who are not familiar with it or who only view rowing as an Olympic sport. For the past 33 years, recreational rowers of all nationalities, ages and abilities have toured lakes, rivers and seas in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Recreational rowers can be any age and this year the oldest male on the FISA tour was 87 while the oldest female was 78. The youngest participants this year were 27 years old.

                Ireland has been given the privilege of hosting the FISA World tour in 2013. The tour will take place between June 15th and June 22nd. It will start in Carrick-on-Shannon and finish in Limerick and we plan to cater for 80 participants. The standard boat used on FISA Tours is a touring 4x+ or 4+ and many clubs throughout Ireland use this type of boat as a “Learn to Row” facility.

For 80 rowing participants we will need 16 boats and 16 sets of oars and they will be required for 2 days either side of the tour dates in order to facilitate collection and return. We are asking for the support of rowing clubs throughout Ireland to make boats and oars available for the tour. The tour is being run on a tight budget but we are prepared to pay clubs a nominal fee of €300 for the use of their boat and oars for the week. We will collect all boats and oars and return them to each club. We will also insure all equipment for the duration of the loan period.

If your club has a boat and oars available for the tour we would be very grateful if you could respond to the undersigned by email at mgodwyer@hotmail.com

Yours in Rowing

Michael O’Dwyer Chairman, FISA 2013 World Rowing Tour Organising Committee