I only found out I was doing this on the morning of the race, which is I feel in the best of Black Prince tradition.  With no real idea of what to expect, we set off, at which point things started to go a bit wrong.  Before the start, there had been a minor cox box panic, which had led to me giving my cox box to W2, as theirs had broken.  As such I had no ratemeter and little ability to make calls.  This wouldn't have been an issue, however the rhythm at which we set off may best be described as "potentially overenthusiastic".  I have no way of knowing for sure, but I feel it was a punchy 35 ish.  I would have started shouting to try and get more control, but frankly, I was having to much fun blazing down the gasworks wall.  Anyway, we proceeded on, and predictably the rhythm started to control itself as people tired, however at Ditton things took a subtle turn for the worse, as Dan caught a crab.  This would have been okay, however the gate was damaged, so we were reduced to sevens for the rest of the course, which probably made us a bit slower.  I was told by the crew afterwards that we were still dropping the crew behind in sevens, so it wasn't too bad...  Anyway, we reached the finish after a difficult but decent row, with a time which was pretty unrepresentative of the quality of the crew.  Oh well. (Swords)