The Club's Results

A storming row, only being beaten by LMBC II out of the second boats; the Red Scum seem to be having crew selection problems again this term with their second VIII only 3 seconds off their first VIII. Not bad for our first outing. (Matt)

After the trials and tribulations of yesterday's Head-2-Head, the rhythm never really materialised today. A time that was 30s slower than yesterday's second leg shows that we need to work on our consistency a little over the next few weeks. (Matt)

A good performance from the 2nd VIII. Had they avoided the scrap with a barge they could perhaps have challenged for the M2 win. 

Reduced the gap between us and the Maggie Scum to 14s from around a minute only two weeks ago - Not bad for our second outing in this particular crew configuration.
A solid rolling start followed by an unnecessary surge was followed by a good first half to the race, complemented by an excellent racing line from Rachel. As fatigue started to creep into the crew's rowing, the efficiency of the strokes dropped as we made our way up the long reach. After being told to "'ave it !" (thank you, Rachel !) coming under the railway bridge, we powered our way towards the finish line, but proved unable to post a faster time than LMBC 2.
A big thank-you to Henry and Iain (and Rachel) for shouting abuse at us for the best part of ten minutes. (Matt)

Quite a nervy row, with the surge being an afterthought:- we still won convincingly, but unanimously agreed it was a shocker: have to do much better next time! (Anything to do with being short)

We had a surge ???

Some good steering off the start pushed the Emma crew wide down the long reach while we sloooooooooooooowly pulled ahead. Lots of powerful strokes were taken, but we probably need to be more efficient in our rowing, and apply the power together. (Matt)

To tell the story of this race, let me take you back to an event that morning, 6.15am, before the day's racing....
I turned up to sub into a 1st VIII outing, to discover that they had removed their rudder getting BP1 off the trailer. Two members of the 1st VIII were busy attempting to remove BP2's rudder to replace it. Dispite protestations, they continued, attempting for a good 10 mins until they realised that they would never remove it, no matter how hard they tried.... We had the outing in BP2, but I digress:

A much stronger start and a powerful surge saw us onto a glorious row: the kind that is painful but you don't want to stop because it is going well. The Queens boat had burned it off the start (see photo of Mays 2002 for Queens' ability to do this) and gone up by three seats or so. 40 seconds down the course, they were starting to blow, whereas we were in our rhythm: we stopped the rot and started to pull back. It was developing into a wonderful row through and a decent scrap. Imagine our surprise to have our rudder break during the next push.... We ended up getting far too friendly with banks, marshalling boats, etc. and decided to pull in further down the course until the end of the set of races and then limp home.

A day of bizarre coincidences, no? (Anything to do with being short)

To add to Will's report, I could just see the Queens' cox starting to return to my peripheral vision (eyes in the boat !) when I realised that bow-side's blades were just skimming the edge of the bank. Remembering that there's a slight corner on the reach, I assumed it was just another excellently judged line from our cox when instead of the expected call of "Push," my speaker relayed a not-quite-sotto voce-enough "Oh, ****" as we landed gracefully halfway along the reach.
After pushing off, we pulled another top notch start out of our bag of tricks and powered off after the enemy, determined to catch them and make a fight of it. Coming under the railway bridge our line was a little wide and we slewed to a halt next to a Darwin crew. As the realisation that we'd lost our rudder set in, we decided to make our way home in fours, using the other four for steering; Rachel still had her hands on the rudder strings, though, and continued to steer on the journey home, despite having experienced the futility of such action in the race :-) (Matt)

A good row, including the now-traditional "'ave it" call; we came in seventh overall. The only other college crew entered was Selwyn I who beat us by around 40s. Compared to the top crews, we've improved since our last effort at this event. (Matt)

Pesky first VIIIs ... Grrrrrrr.
A storming row saw us take half a length out of Maggie off the start, but they quickly closed on Downing ahead and bumped out on first post, leaving us going for the overbump on Magdalene.
Peterhouse were about on station at this point, but due to carnage avoidance and a slight spack, closed to a quarter of a length coming out of Grassy. They pushed to overlap coming past The Plough but we held firm and pushed them away round Ditton. They came right back at us coming out of Ditton corner onto the Long Reach and eventually managed to convert at The Railings.
Kings behind were absolutely nowhere to be seen, and it was heartening to hear that we had been closing on Magdalene ahead. On to day 2 ... (Matt)

... and so it came about that we were chasing the Peterhouse crew that bumped us yesterday. A strong, powerful start saw us moving away from King's and slightly towards Peterhouse.
A slightly scrappy row around First Post presented Rachel with the only concern of the race: a Downing II crew resembling little more than a log drifting with the current. Downing had been bumped by Peterhouse, but were still in the middle of the river coming into Grassy. The Downing cox tried to pull in on the inside of the bend forcing us out wide. As the Downing stern drifted out, it was clear that whilst our nimble craft was up to the task of taking a sharpened corner, the King's' empacher, with the turning radius of a supertanker, came within a hair's breadth of the LMBC crew who were parked on the outside of grassy after bumping Magdalene.
The crew then proceeded to row over comfortably, well clear of Kings, to a round of applause from the Ladies at the finish. Day 3 tomorrow ... (Matt)

... and we were chasing Downing II and being chased again by King's. 5 seconds from the gun, everything was running smoothly ...

... four seconds later a large gust of wind hit the bows. With no time to straighten properly, we started as best we could, but a combination of factors saw us parked on the bank before we could even think about winding it up. The wind blew us against the bank, thwarting all attempts to push back off and King's rowed past for the bump.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. It's not even Friday the 13th today, no-one walked under a ladder on the way to the boathouse, and I haven't seen a black cat in weeks. It surely can't get any worse tomorrow (touch wood) ... (Matt)

We may have stood more chance of bumping Downing II had we actually started the race! A disappointing day for us all, although stroke's attempts to lighten the mood at the boathouse leave much to be desired!! (the girl with the broken lip)

... and we did manage to push off and stay straight today. Unfortunately with Downing II bumping out ahead, going down to King's and two bumps occurring just behind us, the best we could manage was a storming row-over, despite having an injured cox after yesterday's antics. Some quality rowing appeared during the course of the race, matched only by that performed by our new stroke girl (!) on the row home. We know we're at least the second best 2nd VIII around at the moment.

Roll on the Mays !!! (Matt)

A combination of having 3 subs for the race and none of us having rowed for two weeks made the race a slightly scrappy affair, but our relative time and position was consistent with previous results in the first and second legs. Overall we would have come fifth had we been allowed to compete for prizes, three minutes behind the winning crew.

28.29 Cambridge '99
28.56 Rob Roy
29.48 Cantabs
30.41 Huntingdon
31.26 1st & 3rd Trinity II

(Matt)