The Club's Results

Race day was to be a chaotic day.  The first signs of chaos came the day before as both Ronnie and Iwo had tested positive for covid and it had been decided they couldn’t race, after some asking around Bahdan with no convincing and Máté with assurances that no one else could do it agreed to sub. (Thank you both, you saved our day).  Our crew pasta was one of the best I’d had. Igor, Andrew and Andrey headed to Mainsburys to gather ingredients while Luke had agreed to host. Igor was cooking the pasta despite never cooking for himself and thinking water half way up the pasta was a good way to cook it. Andrey made delicious spiced chicken. The whole crew had a part to play in the preparations. We had great fun that night talking about everything from the boat club itself to Travisty being censored. On the way home we surmounted castle mound and posed for photos in a battle stance with Andrey poised to kill with a frying pan. We went home ready to race at our best the next day.  The day started off peacefully as we arrived at Great Gate at quarter to eight before heading to the bus stop Bedford-bound.  Kian perceptive as ever noted that two of the crew had arrived from different directions than they had gone off in in the night before. Despite the bus being ten minutes late we arrived around ten o’clock and made our way to the trailer. We put the boats together just as M1 were returning from their div happy at a race well done. We pushed off and rowed to the start line and after some ropey parking spun and started to race. We were mostly in time and no one crabbed and we finished with a time of 5:41. We returned the boat and headed off for a crew maccies with W1. Who were only 16 seconds slower than us in the first race so we resolved to gain further on them in the second.  We decided the Flash headbands that came with our food would give us free speed however Bomber told us we would be demoted to M4 and have to use Richard Church if we raced in them so we reluctantly took them off. Despite being tired and Oli boaking just before spinning, we were ready to do it all again. Andrew spotted a fishing line caught on a tree and may have interfered with Kian’s parking to tap himself closer to it and retrieve it to stop any fish potentially choking on it.  We raced again more technically than the first time and managed to shave off two more seconds over the course, a fact we were very pleased with. As W1 had gotten two seconds slower the second time, we had gained four seconds on them and achieved our goal.  Then the chaos began. We took apart 804 and QE1 and loaded them onto the trailer unknowingly forgetting six blades. As Andrew and Zara returned to collect their bags James informed them they needed to sprint for the bus as it was leaving in five minutes. They set off and ran into three girls from Fitz who recognised them and told them they had our blades as we had forgotten them. As we sprinted towards the bus we phoned everyone in our contacts to tell them this until Emma finally picked up, got a hold of Bomber and rescued our blades. After 10 minutes of sprinting we just missed the bus and phoned Kian to delay it at the next stop which unfortunately we were also unable to make it after another mad dash for about eight minutes. We headed to spoons for a quick pint and started to write our race reports while some of M1 were gurning over why the rest of the club ought to be paying for their car.  We made the next bus an hour later and returned to Cambridge after the woman’s side and some of M2 had already reconstructed our boats. A good thing as we had an outing the next morning. The day had brought M2 together more as a crew and also had us bond more with W1 as we spent most of the day with them. 
(Andrew Farquharson)