The Club's Results

We lost to the 2nd IV. The shame of it !!
Although the headwind increased nearly threefold between their race and ours, we still should have won.
At least with the light IV taking a break after rowing the first bit of the course too fast, the results bear out Dan's "matched crew" selection policy, and neither crew lost to the LMBC 'Elite' 4- :-) (Matt)

Not a great result, but at least CUWBC didn't beat us ...

After discovering that the Light IV had managed to get all 8 clams for their 4 blades, which were at Cygnet, whilst we were outside Vesta at the other end of the course, and collecting a 'drop' of said clams deposited by agent Ingram, we had a rather uneventful row down to the start, enlivened only by an Eton bow-loader determined to scrape their race number off using my rigger during the hour or so of marshalling.

We eventually spun in front of Goldie VI and proceeded down towards the start line in a leisurely fashion. As we wound up for the start, we noticed that the Goldie boat had decided to position itself about a foot or so off our stern and their cox proceeded to shout abuse at us whilst they moved out to overtake. With him shouting for us to cede the stream (despite the rules stating the opposite), and Rach not taking the slightest bit of notice of his exclamations, the Goldie boat came past us rather too easily and had successfully completed the manoeuvre by Barnes. After this there was a lull in the action, as there was little further threat astern, whilst the Etonian crew ahead had seemingly buggered off into the distance. Some pushes followed before we caught up with a struggling Magdalene II boat and another crew fighting it out. As we were speeding past, a returning boat decided to cross in the wrong place at the wrong time, forcing Rachel to jink sharply out of the stream. Muttering curses under her breath, our usually mild-mannered cox'n urged us on past Chiswick Eyot and Magdalene.

As we approached Hammersmith (Two-thirds gone, apparently) we went for more pushes, but by now were in the middle of no-man's land. With nothing slow enough left ahead of us, and nothing particularly fast behind us, the momentum sagged a bit coming past Harrods, in spite of our best efforts to keep going. Coming past Barn Elms, it became apparent that crew 348, Uni of Hertfordshire (I think) had managed to catch up with us and had us in their sights. Pushing away, we found some more speed and slowed their assault, but they steadily closed further on us as we pushed all the way to the line.
The general feeling in the crew was that it was a reasonable row, but the results show we were 30-40s off the pace. (Matt)

Yes... A rather casual row, in which we had moments where it felt great (mainly when overtaking - which admittedly didn't happen very much!) but mostly a rather slow performance. The most annoying bit was that a bunch of Etonians ('spit') managed to screw us over quite comfortably.
Lovely boating weather, though and a very boring journey through London traffic. (Andrew)

We marshalled in good time and processed down to the start after the women's races had drifted by. After spinning and pulling in to the bank, we were informed that the idiot in the grey barge was afloat and causing the races to be held up. After about a 15 minute wait, the aforementioned vessel hove into view and proceeded to crawl past the marshalled crews.
Eventually we set off. Lining up in the strong crosswind didn't prove too difficult, but Jesus had a few problems. As soon as both crews had a semblance of straightness, Laura gave the "Attention ... GO !" and we were off. A powerful relaxed draw was followed by a quick loose wind, and we proceeded to move outside distance on Jesus up First Post Reach. Moving into the Gut and around Grassy, we were cornering so well that Rachel had to call bowside to lighten up for a couple of strokes in the middle of Grassy. We held it together down past the Plough and then moved round Ditton with Jesus floundering in our wake. As we moved into the 30 knot gusts of headwind up the long reach, we had about 10s or so on the opposition, but we stormed up the reach, albeit a little spackily, and increased our lead to about half a minute by the railway bridge.
After watching Catz finish the previous race, Convey apparently looked up and said "Where's Jesus ??" as we came past a lot sooner than the finish marshals had been expecting with Jesus out of sight round the bend. (Matt)

Rowing against half the Peterhouse May VIII was always going to be tricky. On the way down we managed two of our best starts yet and the real thing lived up to expectations. A strong and technical row down First Post Reach and through the Gut resulted in being just outside station on Peterhouse. Moving into Grassy, Rachel realised that the rudder was not having enough of the desired effect due to some bits of tree we'd picked up. We lost further ground around Grassy and Ditton before deciding to take it up a bit coming down the reach. With immense amounts of power going down, we absolutely flew up the reach, but it appeared that the Peterhouse crew had also pushed and we couldn't quite catch up what we'd already lost in the first half of the race.
Our best row of the week, but sadly, not quite good enough to win on the day. (Matt)

After getting straight out of the VIII and into the IV's, some people were still feeling the after-effects of the previous race. We started off at a nice 32 which dropped down a bit in the middle of the race, but we managed to bring it back up again at the finish as we overlapped a Sidney crew across the line.
A slightly disappointing row, which was reflected in the final result. (Matt)