In the stories of King Arthur and his court, the Ladies of the Lake appear from time to time -- a shadowy sisterhood capable of considerable magic. In the far less mystical setting of downtown Oakland, California, the Ladies of the Lake are capable of a more prosaic but no less wonderful sort of enchantment, as PNS senior sports commentator Eve Pell discovered. Pell is formerly the number one ranked woman road runner over 60 in the United States, and writes a regular column on veteran athletes for Pacific New Service.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA -- In the tales of King Arthur, the "Ladies of the Lake" were priestesses who rowed their boats between the mystical isles of Lake Avalon.

In Oakland, California, far from Arthur's realm, a group named for this legendary sisterhood also plies the waters of a large lake. Though they do not work miracles, as their medieval counterparts were wont to do, they are nonetheless remarkable.

The Oakland Ladies of the Lake meet in uniform at their boathouse every Wednesday to row around the city's Lake Merritt. The group's median age is somewhere in the mid-70s -- their star oarswoman, I had heard, was 95 years old.

I phoned, asked, and was duly invited to row with them.

When I arrived at the appointed hour, the parking lot and boathouse were deserted. A faint sun was barely visible through a soft mist. Four white whaling boats trimmed with blue paint were tied up at the dock, ready to go.

A jaunty SUV drove up and parked. A sturdy woman exited, dressed in white shoes, white trousers, a white shirt, a bright orange jacket, and a blue scarf, decorated with stars, tied about her neck. The ensemble was topped off with a little round white sailor hat straight out of a Busby Berkeley movie.

Other women dressed in the same uniform arrived and congregated, chatting. The predominant hair color was gray, the uniforms immaculate. Stars on their scarves seemed to indicate rank -- gold stars mark five years of rowing, red stars one.

Shirley Coffing, the 74-year-old president -- with steel-rimmed glasses, short gray hair, and a pleasant, no-nonsense, manner -- greeted me with a handshake that left me weak. While she turned aside to speak with a man about a new boat, a dark-haired woman named Connie Blank told me to get an oar. "Stick with me," she ordered.

When the oldest member, 95-year-old Eleanor Smithbauer, arrived, several ladies looked at me and looked back at her, as if to say, "There she is!" Smithbauer walked slowly. The back of her blue scarf was covered with stars, 7 gold and 1 red -- 36 years of rowing.

Coffing took me by the elbow, propelled me over, and introduced me. "THIS LADY IS FROM THE NEWSPAPER," she bellowed. The oldest rower squinted through her thick glasses at me and smiled. "I can't hear," she explained. With that, she moved away toward the boathouse.

"She can't see, and she can't hear, but she can row! And if you make a mistake, she lets you know about it," one woman told me. Another, who had accidentally picked up Smithbauer's special oar, scuttled back into the boathouse to replace it before her error was discovered. Only Smithbauer appeared to have a special oar -- and only she has a special seat in the boat she likes the best. A plaque warns the unwary, "This is Eleanor's place."

As 10 o'clock approached, the ladies lined up on the dock, each holding an oar upright like medieval soldiers wielding lances.

The crews climbed into their boats -- slowly and carefully. Only then did I see signs of age, as stronger women gently helped those whose arthritic knees refused to bend, or whose senses of balance were a little shaky. I sat beside Connie, who explained how to put the oar through the oar lock and defined the commands. "Give way together"-row in unison. "Hold Water"-put your oar in the water and keep it still. "Oars"-stop rowing and keep your oar out of the water. Each boat held 8 oarswomen and, at the stern, a coxswain, who steered and told the crew what to do.

Anxious not to disrupt my boat's rhythm, I fixed on the oar next to mine, rowing in time with it. We pulled away from the dock and out into the still waters of the lake. A black woman jogged by, calling out, "You go, girls!" We waved back. After a half-hour of rowing, the crews stopped in the middle of the lake for candies and a rest, pausing near two tiny islands, each home to flocks of chattering birds. The sun had come out, the air carried the sweetness of spring, the fruit trees along the shore were in full bloom. The four blue-trimmed boats looked sharp with their crisply uniformed crews, their American flags, and coxswains standing tall at the tiller.

I could see why women have been applying to join this group since its 1916 founding. Then, they dressed in long white skirts or butcher coats, white middie blouses, small brimmed hats and white gloves, a uniform that went unchanged until 1978. The group's historian showed me meticulously maintained scrapbooks, filled with newspaper clips, notations of television appearances and official certificates of recognition.

More importantly, perhaps, the scrapbook showed the Ladies of the Lake are a family. Page after page of photos celebrated holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries -- and mourned illnesses and deaths. One displayed the newspaper obituary for Bertha Lerner, her scarf with its 8 gold and 3 red stars, her small white hat, and a vase of flowers; as well as photos of the Ladies rowing out into the lake to scatter petals in her memory.

"We need another boat so we can have more members, but boats are very expensive," Shirley Coffing told me afterwards. "You know, when we stop chatting and you hear the water slapping up against the boat, it's as though the water is talking to you -- it's a calming thing, like a hyacinth for your soul."