General Items of Interest

River Conditions Flag System

• Current weather conditions

Whilst perhaps the foolhardiest boaties may wish to be rowing whatever the weather, CUCBC, the University rowing authorities, can declare the weather or river conditions unsafe and have the authority to ban college crews from boating. Such bans are typically enforced if it is too foggy, windy, or the stream too fast for safe use of the river by the wide range of college crews.

In moderately poor conditions, restrictions are placed on only lower boats. Flags are flown from Goldie Boathouse if there are restrictions in force and mirrored on the CUCBC website to indicate which crews are affected.

	Red Flag No University or college crews may use the river. Originally this was the only flag ever used to indicate that rowing was not permitted.
	Yellow Flag Only University crews, first college boats, and other boats in the first two divisions of the May Bumps (Men) or first division of the May Bumps (Women) are allowed on the river. It is interesting to note that the idea of having a yellow flag was accepted at a CUBC captain's meeting only in 1992, after being proposed by Mark Crawford, our club captain at the time.
	Green Flag Peculiarly, it is traditional for the CUCBC website to show a green flag when conditions are safe - although no flag is flown at Goldie.
	Both Red and Yellow Flags Only University crews and tubs may go out.
	Grey Flag All this means is that our web server was unable to find out the current river status, and you should go to the CUCBC website to check it.

Incidentally, the river condition flags were flown from our own boathouse rather than Goldie until 1994. The move was one result of a succession of unreliable boatmen following the retirement of the long-serving Frank Wellford.