Rowing Shell Storage: Which Shipping Container Actually Fits Your Boats

By Christian LeBlanc, second-generation operator, and Paul LeBlanc, owner, Van Blanc Ent. Inc.

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Will a Rowing Shell Fit in a Shipping Container?

A rowing shell fits a shipping container when the hull is shorter than the interior of the box, and the numbers are tighter than most club captains expect. A racing single runs 7.40 m to 8.33 m depending on the builder: Filippi’s smallest single is 7.40 m and their largest is 8.33 m. A double or a coxless pair runs about 9.8 m. A coxed or coxless quad runs about 12.5 m, and a coxed four about 13.4 m. Against those hulls, a standard 20ft sea can offers roughly 5.9 m of interior length, a 40ft offers 12.03 m, and a 45ft high cube offers 13.56 m.

So the honest fit chart looks like this. Singles, doubles, and pairs all slide into a 40ft with room left over for oars and riggers. The quad misses the 40ft by about half a metre and needs the 45. The coxed four clears a 45ft high cube by only a few centimetres before rigging, which is rack-on-land territory for most clubs. The eight fits nothing, and we will say more about that below rather than bury it.

Weight is never the problem. World Rowing’s minimum boat weights run from 14 kg for a single to 96 kg for an eight, and a 40ft container is rated to carry more than 26,000 kg. The whole fleet of a mid-size club weighs less than one pallet of bricks. Length, rack design, and door discipline are the entire engineering problem, which is good news, because those are solvable with a measuring tape and an afternoon of welding.

The Eight Is the Honest Exception

An eight is 17.25 m in Empacher’s current build and up to almost 20 m in others. No standard container holds one: our longest box, the 53ft high cube, gives you about 16 m of interior, still a metre short of the shortest modern eight. Anyone who tells a club otherwise has never put a tape on either object.

What clubs actually do with the eight is what they already do: outdoor trestles, the boat trailer, or the boathouse bay the club does have. The container earns its keep around the eight, storing everything else so the scarce indoor bay goes to the boat that needs it most. Singles, doubles, pairs, oars, riggers, slings, ergs, coach launch gear, fuel cans, cox boxes, tools, and regatta kit all move into the steel box, and suddenly the boathouse fits the boats that cannot live anywhere else.

Some eights are built in two bolt-together sections, and a sectioned hull changes the math. If your club rows a sectional, measure each half with its hardware and call us; we would rather check the numbers with you on the phone than watch you buy the wrong box.

What the Outdoor Rack Costs a Club Every Winter

Most Ontario clubs are short on indoor space, and the member boats pay for it. Ottawa Rowing Club’s own storage policy hands the convenient racks to the most active rowers and requires standing membership just to hold a spot. Muskoka Rowing Club takes storage requests in writing, one boat, one set of oars, one set of rigging, fee due by June 1. That is not criticism of either club. It is evidence that rack space is rationed everywhere, because there is never enough roof.

The overflow lives outside on trestles under tarps, and outside is where boats age fastest. UV chalks the gelcoat and eats the tarp itself in two seasons. Wind works the straps until they wear a line into the hull. Snow load finds the unsupported middle of a 25-year-old club single. And a carbon shell strapped to an open rack is a five-figure object protected by a bungee cord, which is a sentence no equipment convenor enjoys reading aloud at the annual general meeting.

A lockable steel box on the club’s own ground changes the insurance conversation too. Most clubs formally disclaim responsibility for privately owned boats, so the loss risk sits with the member. A dry, dark, locked bay that members can rent a rack in is a better answer than a waiver, and clubs from the UK to New Zealand have been quietly using 40ft containers exactly this way for years: singles racked down both walls, centre aisle clear, gallows-style arms holding each hull on padded saddles.

With more than 60 member clubs under Row Ontario, from Henley’s home water in St. Catharines to community programs on lakes that freeze four months a year, that squeeze on rack space is a provincial condition, and it is exactly the kind of storage problem how a container compares with everything else a club could buy was written to sort out.

Racking the Inside: Brackets, Padding, and Light

The inside build is simple carpentry and simpler welding. The proven layout in a 40ft is racks down both long walls with a centre aisle wide enough to walk a hull through the doors at a slight angle. Gallows-style arms, welded from square section or framed in lumber, hold each boat on two or three saddles lined with carpet or pipe foam. Leave the bottom level for the heaviest, least-loved training boats and keep the top level for the light race hulls, because the person de-racking at 5:30 a.m. is lifting overhead.

Three practical notes from people who have done this the hard way. First, the doors are the pinch point: a 2.34 m door opening handles any shell beam easily, but plan the carry so the bow enters level, not nose-up. Second, a steel box with the doors shut is completely dark, so mount battery LED strips at each rack bay; there is no window to help you find a bow ball at dawn. Third, bolt the rack frames to the floor rails, not the walls, so a loaded rack cannot walk when forty feet of boat comes off one side.

Oars store standing in a corner rack or flat overhead. Riggers hang on wall hooks with the bolts bagged and zip-tied to each rigger, which future you will appreciate at the first spring regatta. Ergs stack two deep at the door end and come out for winter training without disturbing a single boat.

The Condensation Question, Answered Honestly

A sealed steel box breathes with the weather, and when warm damp air meets cold steel, the roof sweats. That is physics, and it is the one thing to engineer for before the first boat goes in. The fix costs very little: passive louvre vents at both ends to keep air moving, boats toweled off before racking instead of stored dripping, and covers left off inside the box so the hulls can dry rather than sweat under fabric.

Carbon and fibreglass hulls shrug off humidity swings; it is wooden oar handles, leather, and electronics that care. Keep cox boxes and speed coaches in a sealed tote with a desiccant pack, and hang wet-weather gear on hooks rather than in a pile. Clubs that run this setup report the boats come out in April exactly as they went in come November, which is more than anyone has ever said about a tarp. Our shop fits vents, shelving, and lighting at the yard before delivery, the same way we prep any working modification, so the box arrives ready to rack.

Canoe and Kayak Clubs Have It Easier

Paddling clubs get the friendly version of this math. A 16ft or 17ft tripping canoe is 4.9 m to 5.2 m long and slides into a 20ft container end-on with the doors closed behind it. A sprint K1 at about 5.2 m does the same. That means a summer camp or a small paddling program can solve its whole off-season with one 20ft box beside the launch, canoes on wall arms three high, paddles and PFDs on hooks, the trailer hitch gear in a bin by the door.

A 40ft turns the same idea into a fleet room. Two walls of arms hold a dozen or more canoes and kayaks with the centre aisle free, and the far end takes the outboard, safety boats’ kit, buoy lines, and the race-day tent. Camps that run canoe tripping programs tell the same story every fall: the gear that wintered in a locked steel box came out clean, and the gear that wintered under the dining hall came out chewed. Mice do not cut into a c-can.

Which Container Should a Club Buy?

Start from the fit chart. If the club’s longest indoor candidates are singles, doubles, and pairs, the 40ft is the workhorse and the best value per racked hull. If quads or a four are on the list, you want the 45ft high cube we keep in the yard, and the extra foot of height is welcome headroom over the top rack either way. A 20ft suits oars, ergs, and regatta kit, or a canoe program, but no rowing shell fits one, so buy it as the gear annex, never the boathouse.

On grade, boat storage is what wind and watertight was made for: sound roof, sealing doors, honest cosmetic wear, and the budget saved goes into racks and vents. A club that wants the box visible beside a waterfront clubhouse often steps up to a new (one-trip) unit for the factory paint. If you want the plain-language version of that trade-off, the four container grades in plain language walks through all four grades the way we explain them in the yard.

Delivery is the part clubs worry about and should not. Our trucks place containers on tilt-deck trailers, which need a straight approach and firm ground, both of which most waterfront club sites already have in the parking area. We deliver in 1-3 days across Ontario from our 4 Brantford yards, and what delivery day actually looks like covers clearances and site prep in detail. Before any of that, you are welcome to do what club equipment convenors do best: drive to Brantford, walk the rows, and put your own tape inside a 40. Worth the drive is a thing our buyers say, and a rowing club with a tape measure is our kind of visitor.

One more honest sentence, because it belongs here: many people call us saying they found a bin for $1,000 less on Facebook, and two weeks later some of them call back to say it never arrived. A club spending members’ money should buy from a yard it can stand in.

Reach Van Blanc in Brantford

We have supplied shipping containers across Ontario since 1995 from our Brantford yards, and we have measured stranger cargo than a racing shell. Bring the fleet list, or just the length of your longest hull, and we will talk racks, vents, and the right grade before anyone talks money.

Van Blanc Ent. Inc., 90 Morton Ave E Unit 1B, Brantford, ON N3R 7J7. +1 888-509-6658

Club buyers are welcome to walk the yard with a tape measure before committing a dollar of the equipment budget.

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