Welcome to the Franklin gym.
When I first heard that I would be on Franklin, the only vessel big enough to have a gym, I was excited beyond belief. For me, exercise is less of a ritual and more of a necessity. During my first hours on board, I was so excited that I searched every boat plan to locate the gym and check it out. The reason that I couldn’t find it was because… it was located in this closet called the “Gravimeter Room.”
When I asked my fellow crew members about the gym, they chuckled and said “The gym is more of an urban legend.” Huh. What was that supposed to mean? It means that the gym consists of a “Pretty good rowing machine, a terrible bike, and a so-so weight-lifting machine.”
As a coxswain, I have a love-hate relationship with rowing machines. While they are the second-best workout for working your entire body (legs, arms, back, shoulders, abs) and the soreness in your muscles post-workout gives you a great endorphin rush, time stands still on the rowing machine as you move back and forth going nowhere. With the orientation of the rowing machine, keels to the port or starboard side due to wave motion would throw your body weight around the rowing machine making for an even more unpleasant workout.
If I could sum up all of the hours spent in that closet over the past month, it equals more than a day.