Our Home on the Water — The Jane Browne Bove Boathouse

At 5:47 on a Tuesday morning, the parking lot at 13669 Fiji Way is nearly empty. The marina is dark except for the dock lights. Then a garage door rolls up, and eight people who were strangers three months ago begin carrying a sixty-foot carbon fiber shell toward the water without speaking, because they've done this enough times that they don't need to.

This is the Jane Browne Bove Boathouse, and rowing has been launching from this stretch of Marina del Rey for longer than most people realize.

Ballona Creek Before the Marina Existed

UCLA moved its rowing program to Ballona Creek in 1937, drawn by the creek's natural geometry: a straight, sheltered channel that runs almost exactly 2,000 meters — the standard Olympic race distance. For nearly three decades, college rowers trained here on a waterway that most Angelenos drove over without a second thought.

Then, in 1961, the Army Corps of Engineers began constructing Marina del Rey just to the north. Suddenly the creek wasn't isolated — it was adjacent to the largest man-made small craft harbor in the world. UCLA built a new boathouse in 1965 to take advantage of both bodies of water: the creek for racing, the marina for training. A rowing venue that had been adequate became, almost by accident, one of the best on the West Coast.

A Boathouse of Its Own

The Jane Browne Bove Boathouse was completed in 2002 as the home of Loyola Marymount University's men's and women's rowing programs. Two boat bays, a work area, office space, docks, restrooms — not luxurious, but purpose-built. For more than twenty years, LMU rowers launched from this dock before dawn, rowed out into the marina, and returned as the sun came up over the Westchester bluffs.

The location has an unusual advantage. To the north, the protected harbor provides flat water and room for coaching launches to run alongside shells. To the south, Ballona Creek offers a straight, race-length course with minimal boat traffic. And because this is Los Angeles, the temperatures rarely force a cancelled practice. No frozen mornings. No ice on the water. Just row.

What a Boathouse Actually Is

People who haven't rowed tend to think a boathouse is where you keep boats. That's true in the way that a kitchen is where you keep pans — technically correct, functionally incomplete.

A boathouse is where you learn to rig a boat at 5:30 AM, when your hands are cold and the bolts are small and the person next to you is learning the same thing. It's where a coach draws a stroke sequence on a whiteboard while eight people eat peanut butter sandwiches. It's where a novice discovers that the sport they picked on a whim is the hardest thing they've ever done and also the thing they most want to keep doing.

When LMU discontinued its varsity rowing program in 2024, the boathouse didn't go quiet. LA Lions Aquatic Center now operates from the Jane Browne Bove Boathouse, carrying forward a rowing tradition that predates the marina itself. Different athletes, same water, same pre-dawn ritual of carrying a boat to the dock and pushing off into the dark.

The building is at 13669 Fiji Way, Marina del Rey. But if you want to find it, just look for the lights on before sunrise.