Mount Pleasant Magazine March/April 2016

he Charleston rowing

Club is a product of humble

beginnings. Launched by Rando Blyth

in 1987, none of the organization’s

“five or six guys” even owned a racing

scull until after Hurricane Hugo blew

through the Lowcountry in 1989.

They found a boat that the violent storm had tossed from

who knows where. No one claimed the vessel, so, by

default, it became the property of the club.

Blyth rented space on Shem Creek to store the group’s

newfound windfall and, later, the rest of its fleet. Not long

after, another key member of the Charleston Rowing Club

arrived in the Lowcountry, seeking a way to continue his

love affair with the sport of rowing.

Rob D’Italia has been a member of one of the most

prestigious rowing clubs in America. He has skimmed

across tranquil streams and choppy creeks up and down

the East Coast and elsewhere throughout the United

States, and he has put his racing scull in the water at some

of the nation’s most prominent regattas. At one time, he

even had aspirations of competing in the Olympics.

A quarter of a century after relocating to Mount

Pleasant from Philadelphia, a hub of the rowing universe,

D’Italia, along with Blyth and a dozen or so other

Charleston Rowing Club members, is still spreading the

word about the grueling but liberating sport.

“Once I started, I never wanted to stop,” said D’Italia,

now 62.

Since arriving in the Charleston area, D’Italia has

worked with and competed alongside the club rowers at

the College of Charleston and at one time helped coach

rowers at The Citadel. He now hones the skills of members

of the Charleston Rowing Club and also serves as vice

president and treasurer of the Greater Charleston Rowing

Alliance, an organization of area clubs “dedicated to the

promotion and development of the sport.”

D’Italia has not always been addicted to rowing. At

Christin Way, left, and Grace Ford-Dirks work out on Horlbeck Creek.