The Club's Results

The 1st novice women came 5th in the novice fairbairns, keeping up the good novice women's results in the club for the last 3 years. Abandoning the war paint, and unfortunatly a crew member down (note to future lower boats captains: ask all novices if they have any compulsary trips to the Tate Art Gallery on the day of novice Fairbairns before picking crews), the crew raced a good solid race. Stealing the stroke of the 2nd novice VIII (who'd already raced the course once), and putting her on bowside, they were ready to go.

Tom had the 'great' idea of going for a quick paddle before the race, pushing off 5 minutes before we were suppossed to be marshalling the marshals went crazy. After a good few minutes of '1st + 3rd what are you doing?' (classic quote of the day: Marshal to a Queens novice boat: 'Queens, what are you doing?', Queens: 'we don't know') and '1st + 3rd you'll be disquallified if you don't spin and go back NOW' (Tom: 'don't worry, keep rowing'), they came back to to the boathouse and marshalled. Going off behind LMBC they had a good start and were looking comfortable across the course. There were no major disasters in the boat. The 7 strong bankparty however had a bit of a problem with a truck blocking the whole road - meaning that the 1st VIII got a few strokes of rowing without a crazed shouting from the bank distracting them. The girls rowed a focussed and powerful race.

Despite a number of them almost throwing up on the finish line were still in good spirits and managed to sing all the way back to the boat house. They pissed off Downing the most, changing the lyrics of 'we'd rather be at Oxford than St Johns', to 'we'd rather be at Oxford than at Downing'. Loving the controversy this caused they sang other 'adapted' versions at Robinson and Jesus (after telling them that Jesus would add 10 secs to our time if they didn't stop singing they sang 'we'd rather be at Jesus than at Oxford') but manged to get back to the boat house alive.

They (and the club) should be proud of what they acheived in less than ideal circumstances yesterday. I certainly am. (Becca)