The Club's Results

This race saw our first sustained high rate piece of term. As such parts of it lacked the finesse we had found in paddling and short bursts and we were slightly taken by surprise by the headwind on the reach. However, there was plenty of aggression and it is clear that our technical work is paying off. It was a shame to not be able to field the full crew, but Jon proved an admirable temporary Strawson.

If nothing else, we now have 9 bottles of champs to sustain us on these hot outings. (Rich)

Unfortunately the only other serious college scratched, so we were left to race against the clock. We kept the start light and loose rather than unleashing our full power, crossing the timing line at a crisp 48 strokes per minute. After the Wallingford disaster, we had agreed that Natasha would practise getting us round Ditton without using the rudder. Her hands were a little small and unwebbed to secure the best coxing prize, but there was never any danger of hitting the outside bank.

So far so good, but our clock-shaped nemesis hit back on the reach by delivering a sturdy headwind. We didn't quite maintain the precision at the front end, but the aggression was there, and we never let the rate drop below 40 except briefly when Fordy caught a boat stopping crab. Apparently this was due to a progressive rounding error in his optimal blade depth calculations which caused him to attempt to place the top of the spoon 1964.3mm below the surface on stroke 130. This wasn't anticipated in our simulations of the method, the most likely explanation being that we misunderestimated the parameter of thundering awesomeness.

When the results came in we were disappointed to find that we had narrowly missed out on the course record by just 12 seconds, but given that we were a scratch crew with a sub who hasn't rowed for ages and the crab and we hadn't even tried rating above 32 until the day before the race it really isn't too bad, and I'm 110% confident that come bumps we'll be breaking the record and killing their dreams. (Tom C)